A relay of asteroids greets the Earth LIVE AT MIDNIGHT

A relay of small asteroids is passing very close to the Earth, at a distance less than that which separates our planet from the Moon, but still safe: from 12 October to today at least one of these cosmic stones has greeted the Earth, another is arriving this evening and two more are expected at dawn on 21 October.

"This apparent concentration of transits at close range is not indicative of a danger or bizarre behavior by asteroids, but it is completely coincidental," astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, scientific director of the Virtual Telescope, told ANSA.

By now, he added, "these small celestial bodies capable of getting so close we regularly discover them thanks to our capacity for observation deriving from technology, in continuous evolution".

All the steps foreseen in these days, he specified, "will take place in absolute safety: it is not the close distance that represents the danger in itself but the fact of having certainty that the distance is that and in these cases we have this certainty".

From 12 to 15 October and from 17 to 19, the astrophysicist continued, at least one asteroid passed close to the Earth within the orbit of the Moon.

This morning at 8.56 am Italian, for example, the asteroid 2020 UX, with an estimated size of about two meters, passed to about 190,000 kilometers, that is half the lunar distance.

On 19 October there was the passage of the asteroid 2020 TF6, about 12 meters in size, about 150,000 kilometers from Earth.

The procession continues on 21 October, with the passage, at 4.04, of the asteroid 2020 UA, with an estimated size of about 10 meters, which passes at a close distance of 46,000 kilometers.

In the cluster of asteroids protagonists of these close passages, Masi has detected, the latter is the closest one and the Virtual Telescope will offer live observation in the night between 20 and 21 October, starting from midnight .

About two hours later, at 6.18 am on October 21, the asteroid 2020 UY with an estimated diameter of about six meters passes: it will pass at 350,000 kilometers, i.e. at a distance slightly less than that of the Moon.