Watch Live: Asteroid Toutatis Gives Earth a Cosmically Close Shave

Watch live as the 3-mile-wide asteroid 4179 Toutatis zips by the Earth today during a show from the Slooh Space Camera collaboration starting at noon PT (3 p.m. ET).

Toutatis is a well-known asteroid because it makes a flyby of our planet roughly every four years. The passing is often very near, with the object coming within just 10 million miles of Earth — about four times the distance between our planet and the moon — back in 2004. This year’s flyby will be a more ample yet still cosmically close 37 million miles, or about 18 times the Earth-moon distance. Toutatis was first spotted back in 1934 but then considered lost and only officially discovered in 1989.

Because it comes so close to Earth, Toutatis is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, though this does not imply that it will hit us. The chances of the object smashing into the planet are effectively zero for the next 600 years, but Toutatis has a somewhat chaotic orbit that makes long-term predictions difficult. The asteroid is about half the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. A separate 65-foot asteroid named 2012 XE54, discovered only a few days ago, made a close approach to Earth earlier this morning.

Slooh will be tracking the asteroid from their telescopes in the Canary Islands during the afternoon show. Slooh president Patrick Paolucci will be on hand with Astronomy magazine columnist Bob Berman to discuss the asteroid. The Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Massachusetts will also be providing a live-streaming high-definition video of Toutatis from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. PT (5 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET).

Video: Slooh Space Camera

Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

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Watch Live: Asteroid Toutatis Gives Earth a Cosmically Close Shave

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