Deadly asteroid Bennu's first glimpse caught on camera by NASA spacecraft, here's the plan ahead

This cropped set of five images was obtained by the PolyCam camera. Bennu is visible as a moving object against the stars in the constellation Serpens. (Image: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)

Will Asteroid 2016 NF23 hit Earth?

Thankfully 2016 NF23 will narrowly avoid a collision with earth when it skims past the globe on Wednesday, August 29.

But it's travelling close enough for scientists to put it on the US space agency's "potentially hazard asteroid" watch list.

Nasa has classified NF23 as an “Atens” body, which means its orbit comes into the vicinity of Earth, and says it will make a "close approach".

It’s expected to be within 0.03377 astronomical units when it whizzes past Earth which is three million miles from the globe - the sun is 93 million miles away.

How big is it?

The asteroid is reported to be 500m in diameter which would mean it could be as big as the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt - which 451ft tall.

Naza class Near-Earth objects or asteroids as “potentially hazardous” if they come within 4.6 million miles of the globe.

Credit:NASA

 Where is the asteroid now?

In a photo taken on August 27 by the Virtual Telescope Project's 17-inch  scope from Ceccano, in central Italy, the 2016 NF23 appeared to be approximately 3.2 million miles from Earth, according to Virtual Telescope Project founder and scientific director Gianluca Masi.

"The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid; this is why stars show as small trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the centre of the image," Masi wrote in a description of the photo.

"On the top of the image, there is bright band, due to the interference of a very strong full moon, which was less than 40 degrees away. The asteroid was also very low on the horizon, only 24 degrees above it."