[Lamplighter]

How's this for a 12.12.12 coincidence...

Space.com
Mike Wall
12/11/12

3-mile-wide asteroid to buzz planet Earth tonight

A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers.

The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 3 miles wide,
will zoom within 4.3 million miles of Earth
during its closest approach early Wednesday morning, Dec. 12.

That's too far away to pose any impact threat on this pass,
but close enough to put on a pretty good show through top-notch telescopes, researchers say.
And some of those scopes will be tracking Toutatis' movements for
the benefit of sky watchers around the world.
The online Slooh Space Camera and Virtual Telescope Project, for example,
will both stream live, free footage of the asteroid from professional-quality observatories.

"Slooh technical staff will let the public follow this fast-moving asteroid in two different ways.
In one view, the background stars will be tracked at their own rate and the asteroid will appear
as an obvious streak or a moving time-lapse dot across the starry field," Berman said in a statement.

"In a second view, Toutatis itself will be tracked and held steady as a tiny pointlike object,
while Earth's spin makes the background stars whiz by as streaks," Berman added.
"Both methods will make the asteroid's speedy orbital motion obvious as it passes us in space."