If you're not doing anything Wednesday night around 6pm stick your head outside and keep an eye out for the asteroid that will be passing between Earth and the moon. The tiny asteroid was discovered just last week and will be making the rounds this week. 2013 RZ53 was spotted by astronomers at the Mount Lemon Survey at the University of Arizona this past Friday night. They say it poses no threat to anyone on Earth. It measures about 3-10 feet across and will be making it's pass at a distance of 148,000 miles from Earth.
Astronomers said that even if it was on a direct collision course with Earth it would likely burn up because of it's size. The space rock belongs to the Apollo family of near-Earth asteroids — the same group from which the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013 is thought to have originated. The Russian meteor was much larger than the newly discovered asteroid, estimated to have been about 56 to 66 feet wide before it exploded. The project is part of a larger, NASA-sponsored program called the Catalina Sky Survey, which scans the cosmos for potentially dangerous asteroids.
Space.com has the story
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