9:00 p.m. PST: Feeds and text have been updated
The day has come for our planet to get a cosmically close visit from asteroid 2012 DA14. The 50-meter-diameter space rock made its closest approach to Earth at 11:24 a.m. PST/ 2:24 p.m. EST, at which point it was only 27,700 km above the surface, less than one-tenth the Earth-moon distance and well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites.
Wired has live feeds from several sources all day long starting at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST. You can check back with us throughout the day as we update with the latest telescope views from observatories around the world. The current live feed (above) comes from the Slooh Space Camera, and is the second of two shows, this one starting at 9 p.m PST/midnight EST. (The first show can be seen in its entirety at the bottom of this post.) Slooh’s astronomers Paul Cox and Bob Berman will provide commentary and insight along with Prescott Observatory manager Matt Francis.
In addition, a continuous live feed below comes from the Clay Center Observatory in Massachusetts, which started at 3 p.m. PST/6 p.m. EST and will last until 1 a.m. PST/4 a.m. EST.
Below you can see an animation of the asteroid during it’s close pass, which shows just how fast it was moving. The gif uses frames from the Faulkes Telescope South in Australia and was put together by Edward Gomez.
