Amateur stargazers will have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to see an asteroid a third of a mile wide 'narrowly' miss Earth on January 26. The space rock, code-named 2004 BL86, is expected to reach a point about 745,000 miles from our planet, or three times the distance to the Moon.
Although easily far enough away to be safe, the flyby - at an estimated 35,000 miles per hour - counts as a narrow encounter in astronomical terms. It will be the closest any asteroid comes to Earth until the predicted fly-past of another rock, 1999 AN10, on August 7, 2027.
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