Asteroid to Zip Close to Earth on Monday

If you happen to be in South America Monday with a telescope, you can watch a newly discovered asteroid narrowly miss the Earth. Asteroid 2011 MD, between 10 and 50 yards wide, will come within 11,000 miles of the surface—23 times closer than the moon, the Telegraph reports. The space rock was first spotted Wednesday by a robotic telescope in New Mexico.

"We are certain that it will miss us," says one UK expert, "but if it did enter the atmosphere, an asteroid this size would mostly burn up in a brilliant fireball, possibly scattering a few meteorites." (More asteroid stories.)