An image worth a thousand sighs of relief

This series of four photos captures the asteroid that came about 41,000 miles from us Monday - less than 2x the distance of the usual man-made satellite, and much closer than the Moon. What was even scarier than this near miss? No one in the mainstream media seemed to notice until last night. I hope *someone* was paying attention. . .

GIF: cycle of four photos taken of 2009 DD45 on February 27, 2009, over a 36-minute period, in Australia. Photos by Robert McNaught. Via National Geographic

Update: via the NYT Lede blog, an animation of 2009 DD25, our asteroid friend with no respect for personal space:

And an explanation of who exactly watches out for 2009 DD25 and its ilk:

Mr. Revkin also explained that the federal government does, in fact, pay scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, run by NASA in Pasadena, Calif., to keep a look out for big rocks heading our way. But a decade after Hollywood's "Armageddon" briefly made their work seem urgent, it turns out that money is tight around the lab's Near-Earth Object Program. Last July, even before the possibility of the economy cratering was first mentioned, Mr. Revkin wrote that "budget constraints" had "slowed NASA's efforts to meet its goal of identifying 90 percent" of the very largest chunks of rock hurtling about the solar system.

Mr. Revkin added that "rocks similar in size to the one that exploded over Siberia," and the one that passed us by on Monday, are "probably a long way down," on NASA's list of priorities.(source)

erp.