Shortly after ten in the evening on January 26, an asteroid will pass 3,500 kilometers from the earth’s surface. “It’s just under 10,000 kilometers from the center of our planet,” he told theHandle the astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, head of the Virtual Telescope Project.
The celestial body, called 2023 BU, will be the fourth closest ever recorded: it is the third asteroid to fly over the Earth at reduced distances since the beginning of the year, it will pass closer than the space between our planet and the Moon .
There is no impact risk, but it will be possible to see the passage. It was sighted for the first time only a few days ago by the engineer and amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, stationed at the Margo Observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea.
Borisov is known for having discovered the first known interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov, in 2019. It is estimated that the approaching object has a diameter between 3.7 and 8.2 meters: it belongs to the Apollo asteroid group, which includes potentially dangerous celestial bodies because they are at risk of impact.
For example, the Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded above the city of the same name in 2013, was an Apollo asteroid. Currently 2023 BU is located in the constellation Ursa Major and traveling towards the Earth at 9.3 kilometers per second.
Virtual Telescope Project has organized a live broadcast to observe its close passage: it will start at 20.15 Italian time on January 26th.
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