Community Corner
Mega-Asteroid to Fly by Earth
The near-Earth asteroid 2012 LZ1, which astronomers think is about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide.
Get ready Laguna Niguel and Dana Point residents to possibly witness an asteroid the size of a city block flying by Earth Thursday around 5 p.m. If you're stuck in the office, or at the , you may be able to watch it happen live if you can get to a computer.
The near-Earth asteroid 2012 LZ1, which astronomers think is about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide, could come within 14 lunar distances of Earth this evening. Don’t worry about being struck dwn by it though, the mega-space rock will likely only come close enough to be caught on camera.
The Slooh Space camera, an online skywatching service, will have a telescope on the Canary Islands on 2012 LZ1 and stream the footage live, beginning at 5 p.m PDT. You can watch the asteroid flying by on Slooh's website, by clicking here.
Find out what's happening in Laguna Niguel-Dana Pointwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The 2012 LZ1 made its presence known to astronomers just this week as it was discovered on the night of June 10-11 by Rob McNaught and his colleagues. They were looking through the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
NASA Researchers estimate that the space rock is between 1,000 and 2,300 feet wide (300-700 m). On Thursday evening, it will come within about 3.35 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) of Earth, or about 14 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
Find out what's happening in Laguna Niguel-Dana Pointwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Because of its size and proximity to Earth, 2012 LZ1 qualifies as a potentially hazardous asteroid. Near-Earth asteroids generally have to be at least 500 feet (150 m) wide and come within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet to be classified as potentially hazardous, according to NASA.
2012 LZ1 is roughly the same size as asteroid 2005 YU55, which made a much-anticipated flyby of Earth in November. But 2005 YU55 gave our planet a much closer shave, coming within 202,000 miles (325,000 km) of us on the evening of Nov. 8. A space rock as big as 2005 YU55 hadn't come so close to Earth since 1976, researchers said.
To date, astronomers have identified close to 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, but they believe more are waiting to be found.
