Asteroid 1998 QE2 (Plus Moon) Fly-By Today: Best Views

If you haven't yet heard, despite the daily newspaper, radio and television and Internet news reports which have lasted upwards of a month now, Asteroid 1998 QE2 --- not to be confused with the QE2 ocean liner, which is about nine times smaller than the space rock's 1.7-mile width --- is on course to fly by Earth today, its orbit through the solar system bringing it within 3.6 million miles of the Blue Planet at precisely 4:59 p.m. ET.

Thursday, it was excitedly announced by scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that QE2 has its own moon.

NASA on Wednesday, May 29, turned the 230-foot Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif. towards QE2 and discovered, to everybody's surprise, that the asteroid is a binary system.

So, while QE2 is about 1.7 miles in diameter, its newly spotted orbiting moon is about 600 meters wide.

"Radar really helps to pin down the orbit of an asteroid as well as the size of it," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office, speaking during a JPL webcast about the asteroid May 30. "We now know our size estimates were pretty good, but finding it was a binary was surprising."

Chodas said the presence of the moon will provide scientists a more precise way to calculate asteroid's mass. He added NASA will continue to take radar data of QE2 for a long as it can, in order to better predict its future trajectory.

There are several ways to observe the QE2 fly-by personally or online.

One of the first suggestions offered by space writers covering the story about a month ago was to buy or visit a really big telescope, since QE2, even at its closest, will be about 100 times fainter than what folks can typically see with their naked eyes.

There are a good number of observatories across the country typically open to the public on Fridays and which may offer a chance to see QE2 live.

The "Galileo to Gamma Cephi" website, at https://telescopes.stardate.org/guide/public.php , provides a long list of publicly-accessible observatories, categorized by state.

Run by the McDonald Observatory, through the University of Texas' Department of Astronomy, the website also offers a wealth of other information and resources pertaining to telescopes and telescope exploration.

Of course, a more direct option for seeing the QE2's near-earth encounter live would be to visit the Slooh online telescope, at https://events.slooh.com/, which will begin a live webcast at 20:30 UTC (4:30 p.m. EDT).

Also starting at 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT), astrophysicist Gianluca Masi will conduct a webcast from the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/.

The White House will also be hosting a "We the Geeks" Google+ Hangout about asteroids at 2 p.m. ET Friday, with the Office of Science and Technology Policy 's Cristin Dorgelo serving as moderator.

Video guests for that event will include NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver; Bill Nye the Science Guy; former astronaut Ed Lu; Peter Diamandis, co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, who is spearheading an effort to mine asteroids; and Jose Luis Galache, an astronomer at the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

The Hangout can be watched through the White House Google+ page, at https://plus.google.com/+whitehouse/posts.

Watch as well for asteroid updates, as #asteroidQE2 and #1998QE2 seem the hashtags offering the most popular updates about the asteroid's flyby.

You'll also probably want to keep an eye on NASA's Asteroid Watch via the JPL website, at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/ and also JPL's Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/NASAJPL, because even though QE2's closest approach is today, radar astronomers will be observing the asteroid through June 9 using NASA's 230-foot-wide Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., and the 1,000-foot-wide Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.