Potentially hazardous asteroid rushing close to Earth tonight: Here’s everything you need to know!

A new asteroid, approximately 4,500 feet in diameter, is approaching the Earth and will come close to our planet on August 21 tonight is a major source of concern for the astronomers.

Asteroids are mainly rocky and airless objects as they don’t have any atmosphere. Asteroids are the left-over parts of the planet formation, mainly terrestrial planets.

An asteroid is considered a near-Earth object when its distance from our planet Earth is less than 1.3 times the distance from Sun to the Earth.

NASA has revealed that a large asteroid named  2016 AJ193 is expected to pass extremely close to Earth tonight. The near-Earth asteroid will make its closest approach at a distance of just 3.4 million kilometres or 2.1 million miles.

NASA also added that the 1.4-kilometre-wide ‘potentially hazardous’, asteroid will come close to our planet Earth next on February 22, 2063.

Asteroid 2016 AJ193 at its closest to Earth will sweep some 8.9 times the Moon’s distance from us.

According to Earth Sky, it is a “huge and safe distance” but relatively close to a 1.4-km space rock. Amateur astronomers with telescopes might spot it and study it

Heads up! An asteroid will pass near Earth tomorrow. At its closest on Saturday, asteroid 2016 AJ193 will pass some 8.9 lunar distances away. Amateur astronomers with telescopes might spot it Saturday morning.
Read more at https://t.co/EifSzAd7PS
📷 via https://t.co/AGpJheMI0H pic.twitter.com/4RTFdvu4GH

— EarthSky (@earthskyscience) August 20, 2021

Nasa’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) said it was aware of nearly 27,000 near-Earth asteroids as of August 15 and around 1,000 of these were thought to be more than 1km in size.