Watch Asteroid 2012 LZ1 Buzz By Earth Tonight

A huge asteroid will fly by earth tonight at about 8:00 EST. Asteroid 2012 LZ1 is approximately 1,650 feet wide and will come with in 14 lunar distances (3.35 million miles) of earth.

Space.com reports that the asteroid poses no threat to earth tonight but it may be close enough to view with a camera. The Slooh Space Camera will be pointed at the Asteroid tonight from the Canary Islands. You can check out a live stream of the asteroid buzzing by earth at Slooh.com.

CNet reports that Asteroid 2012 LZ1 wasn’t discovered by scientists until this week.

Patrick Paolucci, president of the skywatchers’ site Slooh, said:

“Once in a while one will come out of nowhere like this one, which is actually pretty big. We were like, ‘Wow, we should track this one.'”

On June 1oth, Rob McNaught spotted the huge asteroid through the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. McNaught and his colleague Bob Berman will be tracking the asteroid tonight with the Slooh Space Camera.

Slooh.com writes:

“An unusually large Near-Earth Object, 2012 LZ1 has just been discovered by Rob McNaught and colleagues on 2012 June 10/11 – Slooh Space Camera will track live with Bob Berman and Rob McNaught!”

Space.com reports that 2012 LZ1 qualifies as a potentially hazardous asteroid. An asteroid larger than 500 feet wide and within 4.65 miles of earth are classified as potentially dangerous.

2012 LZ1 may be potentially dangerous but it won’t be as threatening as asteroid 2005 YU55, which passed by the earth last November. 2005 YU55 came within 202,000 miles on November 8th, 2011.

Here’s a video of YU55.