This week, an asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the Moon.

The asteroid 2023 EY will pass close to Earth on Friday (17). During closest approach, it will be about 239,000 kilometers from our planet.

16 mar
2023
– 18:00

(updated at 6:03 pm)

The asteroid 2023 EY will pass very close to Earth soon, without posing a risk to us. On Friday (17), at 8:35 am Brasília time, the space rock will be about 239,000 kilometers from our planet, equivalent to 62% of the average distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Foto: urikyo33/Pixabay / Canaltech

It was discovered on March 13 through the ATLAS survey, an early warning system for asteroids formed by two telescopes in Hawaii, one in Chile and one in South Africa. Together, they scan the sky a few times a night, looking for moving objects.

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This is how the asteroid 2023 EY was detected. Initial estimates indicate that the asteroid is between 13 and 29 meters in diameter; therefore, it appears to be about the same size as the meteoro de Chelyabinskwhich exploded over Russia in 2013.

Asteroids are rocks left over from the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. In the case of 2023 EY, it is an Apollo-class asteroid, that is, it has an orbit wider than that of Earth around the Sun, and its trajectory crosses with that of our planet.

It is part of a NASA list of asteroids under monitoring. There, are the space rocks that will be relatively close to Earth, that is, those that will be less than 7.5 million kilometers from our planet (a distance equivalent to 19.5 times that of the Moon).

How to observe the asteroid 2023 EY

You will be able to follow the passage of the asteroid through the Virtual Telescope project, which will display live images of the space rock 12 hours before the flyby.

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