Three-mile-wide Asteroid 3200 Phaethon to skim Earth just before Christmas

Planet Earth will have a terrifyingly close encounter with a three-mile-wide asteroid just over a week before Christmas.

A gigantic space rock called 3200 Phaethon is due to brush ‘quite close’ to our planet on December 17, Russian astronomers have revealed. This huge asteroid is thought to cause the beautiful Geminids meteor shower which will take place between December 13 and 14, causing hundreds of bright meteors to illuminate the night sky as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/11/24/three-...8/?ito=cbshare