Masi, who shared an hour-long webcast of the observations on the Virtual Telescope website, wasn't able to capture the closest approach as clouds rolled in, however.

(Image credit: The Virtual Telescope Project)The rock, discovered less than a week ago on Saturday (Jan. 21), passed above the southern tip of South America at 7:27 p.m. EST on Thursday Jan. 26 (0027 GMT on Jan. 27), at a distance of only 2,240 miles (3,600 km) at its closest point to Earth's surface.

If the trajectories of the two bodies had intersected, the asteroid would mostly have burned up in the atmosphere with only small fragments possibly falling to the ground as .

In the videos and images shared by Masi, the asteroid is seen as a small bright dot in the center of the frame, while the longer, brighter lines are the surrounding stars.

As Masi's computerized telescope tracked its positionthe rock appeared stationary in the images while rendering the stars as these moving streaks.

From now on, BU 2023 will travel through the inner solar system on a more elliptical path, venturing half way toward Mars at the farthest point of its orbit.