7482 (1994 PC1), an asteroid bigger than the Burj Khalifa, successfully flew past earth early this morning, whizzing past the UAE without making a sound.
To put it into perspective, the large stony asteroid was around 1 km long, which is around 2 1/2 times the of the Empire State Building. The Burj Khalifa, meanwhile is 828 m tall. That’s one big asteroid.
To make matters even more concerning, it was one of the closest this asteroid has gotten in a long, long time.
Want to watch it fly past? Here’s the video footage:
An asteroid of this size strikes the Earth in direct impact once every 600,000 years or so.
Luckily, as predicted, the asteroid safely passed earth after first being identified by NASA back in 1994—hence the 1994 in its name. It was discovered by a scientist named Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Obersvatory in Australia back on August 9 of that year.
It’s also not the first time it’s passed us with us knowing—the asteroid last came close to the earth back in 1997. We’ve also been able to trace fly-bys of the earth from this asteroid back to September 1974, finding old images of it that we hadn’t noticed before the grunge era.
Here’s some more footage, this time from from Kevin Cintron in Puerto Rico:
And if you’re worried about it coming back around again soon, rest easy—this is predicted to be the closest this asteroid will get to us for the next 200 years.
The asteroid passed about 1.93 km away from earth, or 5.15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Many intrepid scientists and enthusiasts were out in full force to catch the asteroid passing by, but while many in the UAE were hoping to catch a glimpse, it turns out that the US had the best. View this time. A man named Steven Bellavia created the video you see here at the top.
We’ll keep an eye on the skies for you if any near-misses are headed towards us in the near future.
Stay safe everyone….