The passing of an asteroid.

This has been very widely reported but not seen by me until a few moments ago.

Here’s how the BBC is reporting Asteroid 2005 YU55.

Giant asteroid to pass near Earth

An asteroid that is 400m (1,300ft) wide will pass by the Earth on Tuesday, closer to it even than the Moon.

It poses no danger to the Earth and it will be invisible to the naked eye.

Asteroid 2005 YU55’s closest approach, at a distance of 325,000km (202,000mi), will be at 23:28 GMT. It is the closest the asteroid has been in 200 years.

It is also the largest space rock fly-by the Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by such a large asteroid will be in 2028.

The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid is darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it races through our neighbourhood of the Solar System.

It will trace a path across the whole sky through to Thursday.

The NASA details may be found here.

And an interesting video on the passing of this rather large rock at 23:28 UTC today, November 8th.

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