HONOLULU — Asteroid 2024 MK, recently discovered by a University of Hawaii telescope, will pass close to Earth tonight. The asteroid will pass within the orbit of the moon. Orbit calculations by NASA and the European Space Agency predict that it will make its closest approach to Earth at 1:30 a.m. Hawaii time.
The asteroid is about 176 meters across — almost two football fields. It will brighten to visual magnitude 8, making it a little too faint to see with the naked eye. However, it should be easy to spot with binoculars or a small telescope. The best time to see it in Hawaii is around 10 p.m. Look for it in the southern sky, southeast of the constellation Scorpius.
Stars in the constellation Scorpio (NASA)
“2024 MK is a routine discovery for ATLAS, and while this object will not collide with Earth and poses no immediate threat, it shows that we can detect these objects before they approach or collide with Earth,” said Larry Denneau, an astronomer at the UH Institute for Astronomy and co-leader of the ATLAS mission.
The asteroid was discovered only recently, on June 19, by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert Survey) telescope at the University of Hampshire in Sutherland, South Africa. This telescope is one of four global telescopes in the ATLAS system.
The ATLAS system is the first line of defense in the search for dangerous asteroids and can monitor the entire dark sky every 24 hours.
