Whether we like it or not, asteroids pass by our planet very often, and some of them are incredibly large. We should be thankful every day that those cosmic objects don’t have our planet’s name written on them.
As a massive asteroid once led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, a lot of scientists believe that it’s only a matter of time until Earth will be once again in the trajectory of a Chicxulub 2.0 impactor. Hoping that humanity will be prepared for such a moment to avoid a global disaster, there are other things we all should worry about. And no, not asteroids, at least for now.
Potentially hazardous asteroid passed by Earth on Tuesday
According to PetaPixel.com, a potentially hazardous asteroid flew past our planet at a pretty close distance. Sure, it may mean nothing for us humans, but for the Universe, it’s practically nothing.
Photographer Andrew McCarthy is the lucky man who captured some real-time footage of the asteroid:
Here’s what the photographer declared for PetaPixel:
I’ve never photographed a near-Earth asteroid before, and I was setting up for my latest transit shot anyway so tried to look for it,
It was super cloudy, so I wasn’t able to properly align my scope the way I usually do to find objects.
Instead, I used an app on my phone to find where the asteroid was supposed to be in the sky, and just eyeballed my scope’s orientation to try and find it.
He continued saying, as quoted by the same source:
I didn’t think I would be able to, but I found it on the first try,
It was so bright I was able to create a real-time video of it, something not usually possible with objects like this.
The Universe is full of surprises, indeed!
