ROCKY ROAD
Huge asteroid over twice size of Empire State Building caught in eerie footage making close approach to Earth
AN asteroid more than twice the size of the Empire State Building made a nerve-shredding close approach to Earth on Tuesday this week.
The giant space rock was caught on camera by a talented astronomer as it hurtled through space.
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Asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1), as it's called by Nasa, is estimated to be around 3,551 feet wide by the space agency.
Gianluca Masi, manager of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, managed to capture the amazing moment it made a close approach to Earth.
At 21:51 GMT (16:51 ET) on January 18, the asteroid came within 1.2million miles of our planet.
That's the closest it's been since 1933.
The distance may sound pretty far away but any fast-moving space object that comes within 4.65 million miles is considered to be "potentially hazardous" by cautious space organizations.
One small change to their trajectories could spell disaster for Earth.
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Luckily, Asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1) stayed on the right path.
Masi captured the asteroid in footage taken from the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy.
The grainy black and white animation is made up of long exposure images that were captured via a telescope.
The long exposure means stars look like lines and the asteroid looks like a small dot.
Masi explained on the : "We captured several images of the potentially hazardous asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 while safely approaching us. We made a still picture and nice animation.
"The image above comes from a single, 60-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope.
"The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the center of the image, marked by an arrow."
The footage was captured just before the asteroid's closest approach.
It shot past us at just under 44,000 miles per hour and then continued into space.
The asteroid is said to cross Earth's orbit every 30 years or so.
It isn't expected to come this close again for another 200 years.
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