The eclipse may be over, but that doesn’t mean the celestial drama has to end completely.
NASA announced Thursday that Asteroid Florence, the largest asteroid ever tracked by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, will pass safely by Earth on Sept 1, just 11 days after the great American eclipse.
“While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will on September 1, all of those were estimated to be smaller,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began.”
The asteroid is about 2.7 miles in size, NASA estimates. It will pass within 4.4 million miles of the Earth, or about 18 times the distance between the Earth and moon. That’s much too far away to be dangerous, but tantalizingly close for scientists, astronomers and enthusiasts who can’t wait to view and study it.
NASA will be using radar to create an image of the asteroid with the Goldstone Solar System Radar in California the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The asteroid was named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.
This year is the closest the asteroid has passed since 1890, and it will not pass this close again until 2500. It will brighten over time and become visible to small telescopes in late August and early September as it passes through the constellations Piscis Austrinus, Capricornus, Aquarius and Delphinus, NASA said.
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