An asteroid the length of roughly eight-and-a-half football fields will hurtle past Earth — or so we hope — on Sunday, July 22. But even though the 3,000-foot-wide asteroid is huge, you won't be able to see it with the naked eye. The good news is that you don't need to have fancy telescopes to see it fly by — you can watch the event online.

Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid from the Canary Islands in Africa as it makes its way through the sky, and will live stream it on the internet starting at 4:30 p.m. Pacific on July 22. But if you miss the first live stream because you're out partying or are otherwise intensely analyzing our weekly bad stock photo gallery, don't worry — there's another live stream you can catch, starting up at 8 p.m. Pacific, as another telescope in Arizona tracks the asteroid as it passes by.

This huge asteroid known as AM31 was discovered in 2002, and will come within 3.2 million miles from Earth. That's almost the same distance another 1,000-foot asteroid reached last June, which also led to a flyby live stream event by the Slooh Space Camera team.

Depends. It sounds a little boring to watch a moving object cruising by, even if it is in space. Can you convince me why I should watch?

You might see Bruce Willis on it.

You mean that was real? Just like everything on youtube?

You made my day..

I always thought looking up at the stars was romantic. Imagine looking up at the stars seeing an asteroid flying by also. :)

Of course in actuality would be more satisfying I agree.

I remember only a few years ago an asteroid the size of Earth's moon hit Jupiter. That was the first time in history we have ever seen this happen. Aren't we lucky such rocks don't hit us! It would be game over for everyone. :(

You are probably thinking of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which broke up into 21 pieces, some of which were 2 kilometers wide, but nothing anywhere near as big as our moon has hit anything observed in our history.

3.2 million miles isn't very close. Venus is 23.6 million miles at it's closest and our moon is about 225,000 miles away. So the asteroid is ten times as far away as our moon.

Oh yes exactly. I found it amusing to see such an impact on Jupiter. Imagine if it wasn't fragmented at the time and hit Jupiter! Thanks for the correction.

Oh well, I guess I will be watching this asteroid tommorow alone. I figured not many people are interested in such things. :(

I was fooling with you. But hey, Torgo70 had a great point. Yep, I will watch it :-)

Hey I have a date then...just kidding. :)

It can be a nerdy mates date. Lol.

Here you go beautiful. I am not smart enough to know how to make this a link, but maybe you can just highlight it and paste it on your web browser. It shows exactly in how many hours our asteroid will pass by. When you see it make a wish and maybe it will come true. It is just for fun. :)

Here is the link - http://events.slooh.com/

I just wanted to say that the asteroid is travelling 6 miles per second! It is amazing that they can track this huge rock at this speed!

The asteroid is almost a mile long as I listen to the researchers that will observe the object in about 2 hours.

I am not sure if it is a mile long now, but it was a big one and I saw it!

Okay to end this thread I will leave this information:

Astronomers have discovered roughly 9,000 near-Earth asteroids to date, but they think many more are out there.

The impact threat from this cloud of space rocks is real. Over its 4.5 billion-year history, Earth has been hit by asteroids repeatedly, including some that have wiped out large percentages of the planet's life forms. For example, the dinosaurs appear to have been done in by a 6-mile-wide (10-km) space rock that crashed into Earth 65 million years ago.

NASA astronomers and scientists around the world regularly monitor the night sky for large asteroids that could pose a threat to our planet.

I wonder if it has enough mass and the proper orbital dynamics to 'perturb' the structure of the Moon.

We are attached to the moon by the forces of gravity.

Such a perturbation might actually induce an earthquake (albeit a small one) here on Earth.

Is he gonna blow it up?

Yippie kai yay!

Good questions! I wish I could help you with them, but unfortunately I wouldn't know the answer. I do think it could effect our system if such a large rock whizzes by us that close, I could be wrong though. :)