House-Size Asteroid Gives Earth A Close Shave Today - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

YAHOO.COM - An asteroid the size of a house will buzz Earth today (Oct. 12) but poses no risk of hitting our planet, scientists say.

The asteroid 2012 TC4 will pass Earth at a range of just 59,000 miles (95,000 kilometers) —about one-fourth the distance to the moon — when it makes its closest point today, NASA scientists said. The asteroid was discovered by astronomers on Oct. 4 and is about 56 feet (17 meters) across.

"Small asteroid 2012 TC4 will safely pass Earth Oct 12 at just .25 the distance to our moon's orbit," scientists with NASA's Asteroid Watch program wrote in a Twitter update this week. On average, the moon's orbit is about 238,000 miles (383,000 km).

The asteroid is large enough to be seen by backyard astronomers using a small telescope, the night sky events website Spaceweather.com has reported. click here to read more

The Virtual Telescope Project in Italy run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi will provide a live telescope view of asteroid 2014 TC4 starting at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) via the project's WebTV. You can access the webcast here: http://www.astrowebtv.org.