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epa03586258 A long exposure of the University of the Philippines observatory where Filipinos are hoping to see the passing asteroid in Diliman, Quezon City, eastern Manila, Philippines, early 16 February 2013. An asteroid half the size of a football pitch made the closest pass ever observed from Earth on 15 February, some 28,000 km above Indonesia, NASA said. The near-Earth object, named 2012 DA14 after it was discovered last year by astronomers from an observatory in La Sagra in southern Spain, is 45 m in diameter. The asteroid is large enough to potentially devastate a large city if it struck Earth, which NASA scientists have ruled out. The fly-by came the same day a meteor broke apart in the atmosphere over central Russia, injuring around 1,000 people as a shockwave blew out windows and collapsed some walls. The flyby at 7.8 km per second was the closest by such a large object in the decades since astronomers began cataloguing near-Earth objects. It is the closest among upcoming asteroid passes projected for the century ahead. EPA/DENNIS M. SABANGAN