NASA has warned that a massive Christmas Eve asteroid is set to zoom past Earth tonight.
The rock is thought to the the size of a ten-story building, and will skim past the planet at 14,743 miles per hour.
According to NASA’s Eyes on Asteroids tool, 2024 NX1 has an average estimated diameter of 47.42 metres.
As of 10.15am this morning, the asteroid is 1.51 astronimic units away from Earth. One AU is 92,955,807 miles.
MailOnline reports that it will reach its closest point to Earth at 02.56 am GMT in the early hours of Christmas Eve.
NASA defines Near-Earth objects as asteroids and comets with orbits that bring them to within 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the Sun.
This means they can circulate through the Earth’s orbital neighborhood.
The space agency adds: “Most near-Earth objects are asteroids that range in size from about 10 feet (a few meters) to nearly 25 miles (40 kilometers) across.
“The orbit of each object is computed by finding the elliptical path through space that best fits all the available observations, which often span many orbits over many years or decades.
“As more observations are made, the accuracy of an object’s orbit improves dramatically, and it becomes possible to predict where an object will be years or even decades into the future – and whether it could come close to Earth.”
Jess Lee, astronomer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, told MailOnline: “It will be very far away, around 18 times further away from the Earth than the Moon is, and so with this predicted path won’t come close enough to hit the Earth.”
How to see asteroids
According to the University of Arizona, under the darkest skies, you might see the largest asteroids with the naked eye.
But, discovering smaller ones requires a telescope, preferably one with an aperture of at least eight inches and equipped with an astronomy-imaging camera.
The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory advises: “Take multiple photographs of a patch of sky over 60 minutes and then quickly flip through those images one after the other, looking for bits of light in motion.
“Stars will appear stationary, but asteroids, satellites, comets and other bits of space debris will seem to move. Try to photograph your asteroid over several nights to collect information on its orbital path.”
