An asteroid the size of 15 atomic bombs flew past Earth on Friday night, at a distance ten times greater than the distance between our planet and the Moon.
On Monday, astronomers spotted a cigarette-shaped rock spinning through space. They followed her through the atmosphere.
Stargazers were amazed by the "sparkling" of the asteroid, until they thought it was happening because of its oblong shape. Fortunately, the 50-meter-long rock, which could destroy entire countries, passed almost unnoticed at a distance of 220.000 miles.
"When we look at an asteroid we usually see light elongated along its axis," NASA's Don Yeomanse told news.com.au.
"GP59 is approximately 50 meters long and we estimate that its rotation period is about seven and a half minutes. This makes the object's brightness change every four minutes."
Spotted in Andalusia
Nick James, from Chelmsford, Essex, took a picture of "Asteroid 2011 GP59" on Monday evening, and the image shows the object glowing. The asteroid, which was imaged by an 11-inch telescope, was about 2.081.000 miles from Earth at the time.
Astronomers have recorded about 3000 asteroids so far
Astronomers at the Mallorca Astronomical Center in Andalusia, Spain, noticed an asteroid heading our way. On Friday, the space rock passed the moon's orbit at about 220.000 miles. This is equal to ten times the distance of the Moon from our planet.
Experts say that there was no reason to fear an asteroid hitting the Earth.
"There is no possibility of small rocks from space entering the Earth's atmosphere in the near future," Yeoman said.
Astronomers have recorded about 3000 asteroids so far. Asteroid GP59 was five times the size of the asteroid that exploded over Indonesia in October 2009.
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