An asteroid will be zooming past Earth on Christmas Eve

Not one to be forgotten in the midst of all our Christmas celebrations, space is giving us plenty of reasons to look up and marvel at its various cosmic phenomena, sending an asteroid our way on 24 December, and then dishing up the first Christmas full moon in almost 40 years. 

You don't want to miss out on seeing either of these events - we won't see Asteroid 2003 SD220 around these parts again till 2018, and we have an even longer wait for the Moon and Christmas to line up again. NASA predicts that the next full moon to fall on Christmas Day will not occur until 2034.

 Christmas Eve is going to be a busy night in space for Earth-dwellers. Not only will the International Space Station (ISS) be visible over the U.K. on Christmas Eve, but there will also be a giant asteroid passing over Earth. And Santa’s sleigh will be up there too, obviously.

The asteroid, known as both 163899 and 2003 SD220, will pass Earth on Christmas Eve at 8 kilometers (5 miles) per second. While initial reports estimated the asteroid to be between 0.7 and 1.3 kilometers (0.4 and 0.8 miles) in diameter, recent findings from the Arecibo Observatory say it’s more likely to be around 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in size.

Despite claims that this asteroid “could cause earthquakes and volcanoes,” the space rock will harmlessly fly over Earth at a distance of 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) – that’s around 28 times the distance from the Moon.

Unfortunately, this distance means you won’t be able to see the asteroid, unless you have a radio telescope like the one at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico that gather