Large asteroid 2011MD to give Earth a close shave today, how you can see it

cv                                                             For people who are even slightly familiar with the solar system, it is common knowledge that Earth is in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery with millions upon millions of asteroids constantly hurtling through the solar system at almost unimaginable speeds. Just a few days ago, it was announced that, come today, Earth is going to have a close encounter with an asteroid that, literally, avoided detection until almost the last minute.

Fortunately, though, the asteroid will pass Earth, but only with about 12,000 miles (about half the Earth's circumference) to spare. In the cosmic scale, this is about the closest shave imaginable.

So, with this space news story quickly crossing over into the mainstream media, it is no surprise that Google searches on things like 'asteroid' and '2011MD' have gone through the roof lately. As for astronomers, both professional and amateur, they have been busy training their eyes, telescopes, and cameras on the bus-sized body that is, right now, hurtling through space in our direction at several thousands of miles per hour.

Of all astronomy websites that predominantly feature pictures,spaceweather is probably the best because its galleries are all user-created, meaning that website visitors themselves send their images/videos to the staff at Spaceweather, who then create galleries from them. To see some really cool photos/videos of 2011MD,

For people with medium-sized telescopes (or larger if you live in a light polluted setting like Cleveland) and know where to look, 2011MD will present an interesting telescopic target, too.