Image caption Esa's Herschel Space Observatory captured Apophis in its field of view in the far-infrared light in January 2013 
 
 A 300 metre-wide asteroid is making a close pass to the Earth. Asteroid Apophis has long been billed as a "doomsday asteroid" because of a 2004 study that predicted a 2.7 percent chance of the space rock hitting Earth when it passes within 22,364 miles (36,000 kilometers) of the planet in April 2029, European Space Agency officials said. Later studies proved, however, that the asteroid poses no threat to Earth during that flyby, but astronomers continue to track the object since it will make another pass near Earth in 2036. The webcasts, offered by the stargazing websites Slooh Space Telescope and Virtual Telescope Project, will show Apophis as a bright light moving across the night sky. They have calculated that in 2036 there is a very small chance it could collide with our planet.
– The asteroid Apophis, whose reported threat to our planet has attracted widespread attention, is even larger than scientists believed, according to new images. Europe's Herschel Space Observatory says the asteroid is some 1,066 feet feet wide, some 20% wider than previously thought. That "translates into a 75% increase in our estimates of the asteroid's volume or mass," says the study's leader. Fortunately, we survived yesterday's passage, and reports that there was a 2.7% chance it would hit Earth in 2029 have been debunked. But scientists are still investigating the asteroid, which will pass near us again in 2036, LiveScience notes. At that point, there remains a one-in-200,000 chance of a collision, the BBC reports. "There is a small region of space—something we call a keyhole—and if it passes through that keyhole in 2029, it will come back and hit us on 13 April in 2036," says a scientist. It would carry 100 times the energy of our biggest nuclear weapons, he adds. "While there is no cause for alarm, similarly there is no room for complacency," writes Stuart Clark at the Guardian, which has video.