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 Slooh Space Camera tracked the approach of the asteroid as it
raced past the planet at about 27,000 mph (43,000 kmph), starting at
9 p.m. EST (2 a.m. GMT, February 18), the robotic telescope service
said in a statement on Slooh.com.
The Dubai Astronomy Group provided Slooh photos of the part of the
sky where the rock was expected to be seen, but its motion could not
be picked out immediately in a live webcast against the backdrop of
night-time stars.
The 295-yard (270-m) asteroid was streaking past Earth at a distance
of about 2.1 million miles (3.4 million km) little more than a year
after another asteroid exploded on February 15, 2013, over
Chelyabinsk, Russia. That asteroid injured 1,200 people following a
massive shock wave that shattered windows and damaged buildings.
Chelyabinsk region officials had wanted to mark the anniversary by
giving a piece of the meteorite to each 2014 Winter Olympic athlete
who won a medal on Saturday at the Sochi Games. However, the
International Olympic Committee at the last minute said it could be
done only after the games and separately.
Slooh's flagship observatory on Mount Teide in Spain's Canary
Islands was iced over and unable to be used for the 2000 EM26
viewing, Paul Cox, Slooh's technical and research director, said on
the one-hour webcast.
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"We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids — sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to
Earth," Cox said in a statement before the show.
He added, "We need to find them before they find us!"
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Nick
Zieminski and Clarence Fernandez)
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