TORONTO – An asteroid — discovered just four days ago — buzzed past Earth Wednesday at just twice the distance from Earth to the moon: about 700,000 kilometres.
Asteroid 2013 XY8 was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on Dec. 7.
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Measurements taken by several observatories around the world put the size of the asteroid at around 30 m. The one that broke up over Russia in February was 19 m.
Animation of 2013 XY8
It’s long been known that the formation of our solar system created thousands of orbiting leftovers. Astronomers around the world are attempting to catalogue any potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA). But the solar system is a very big place and asteroids aren’t very big, comparatively, nor are they bright.
In fact, in September, Russian astronomers revealed that Earth narrowly avoided a collision with an asteroid that was detected only hours before it flew 11,300 km from Earth.
Asteroid 2013 XY8 poses no threat to Earth.
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