Asteroid 2009 EW just flew by Earth

2009 EW at closest approach (now), viewed slightly from the side. You can also see why Venus is now sinking so quickly in the evening sky as it approaches the Sun from our point of view.

Guess what, another asteroid just flew by the Earth at a distance closer than that between us and the Moon. Spaceweather.com has a chart on recent flybys and others for March:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Mag.	Size
2009 DS43	Mar. 1	6.9 LD	18	32 m
2009 DD45	Mar. 2	0.2 LD	11	35 m
2009 DN4	Mar. 3	8.1 LD	21	27 m
2009 EA	Mar. 4	7.4 LD	19	24 m
2009 EW	Mar. 6	0.9 LD	16	23 m
161989 Cacus	Mar. 7	70.5 LD	16	1.7 km
2009 EH1	Mar. 8	1.6 LD	18	12 m
2009 DV43	Mar. 10	8.5 LD	18	80 m
2009 EU	Mar. 11	3.5 LD	18	21 m
1998 OR2	Mar. 12	69.8 LD	14	3.3 km
2009 DR3	Mar. 14	7.2 LD	16	225 m

(LD = Lunar Distance)

The one that attracted a fair bit of attention a few days ago was 2009 DD45, thanks to its proximity, but this one is also quite close. Someone has an account on Twitter that mentions whenever there's a close encounter, and wrote:

2009 EW just passed the Earth at 13km/s, approximately three hundred and forty-four thousand km away.

Nice and simple. I think I'll follow that account myself.

1998 OR2 also looks like an interesting flyby given its size (3.3 km). I see on its tracking page (be careful with that link, it always seems to shut down Firefox so I use Opera to open it) that since its discovery in 1998 it hasn't been any closer than 0.8 AU or so to the Earth, so this will be the first time it's been so close. Here's what it'll look like on March 12 at closest approach (0.179 AU):