Also known as 'The Corn Muffin Comet'


An Asteroid with Its Own Moon Will Zip Past Earth Tonight

A very big asteroid with its own little moon is going to zip past Earth tonight (May 25) — close enough that, with some preparation and a decent telescope, amateur astronomers may spot it blotting out the stars.

This moon-and-asteroid system, called 1999 KW4, is made up of two rocks. The big one is about 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers) wide, according to NASA, and shaped like a spinning top. The smaller one is more elongated and stretches 0.35 miles (0.57 km) along its longest dimension. It points lengthwise toward its much larger twin.

Together, the asteroid and its minimoon will pass Earth at such a strange, steep angle that NASA called them "the least accessible … for a spacecraft mission of any known binary near-Earth asteroid."
[www.space.com]

The two asteroids will pass closest to Earth at 7:05 pm EDT (1105 GMT), when they'll be just 3,219,955 miles (5,182,015 km) from the planet's surface. That's more than a dozen times the distance between the Earth and the moon in its orbit around our planet, and much too far for the space rocks to pose any threat.

but we just thought that you'd like to know about it because every news outlet on Earth is running silly panic stories about it.

So, who’s fault is it; Republicans or Democrats?

Mmmm, space corn muffin....