iceman
28-09-2004, 11:56 AM
Asteroid Toutatis, a frequent visitor in our neighborhood, will pass as close as 1.5 million km (960,000) miles to the Earth on Wednesday. As spacerocks go, Toutatis is pretty big; it's 5 km (3.1 miles) long and weighs 2.5 million kg (5.5 million pounds) - an asteroid this size was thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although there are plenty of doomsayers predicting the Earth's demise, Toutatis will keep its distance, passing four times as far as the Moon. The spacerock isn't visible without a telescope, and its position depends where on Earth you're looking at it. This makes it a very challenging object for amateur astronomers to spot.