As 2012 DA14 comes by tomorrow...

When you see computer-generated images of asteroid 2012 DA14′s February 15, 2013 close flyby – showing the asteroid near Earth in space, seen from a distant vantage point – you might see the Earth, the asteroid, perhaps the sun, and maybe a few other planets.

Here is another way to picture Earth and close-passing asteroids, from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland. The image below is near-Earth space today – February 13, 2013. It shows all the objects currently within 0.3 AU of Earth – that’s 45 million kilometers – or about 30 million miles – or about one-third of the distance between us and the sun. The red oval around Earth represents 3.84 million kilometers, or 10 lunar distances. 

 Read the whole story on EarthSky here... and if you wanna laugh at a TV talking head, CNN’s Deborah Feyerick wanted to know if it was all because of global warming... see that here...