Stargazers film rare asteroid breakup for the first time

ASTRONOMERS have photographed the spectacular disintegration of an asteroid, showing it breaking up into ten smaller pieces. Check it out.

Close call ... This graphic depicts the passage of asteroid 2014 EC past Earth today. The

ASTRONOMERS have photographed the disintegration of an asteroid, showing it breaking up into 10 smaller pieces during the 4 month period until January this year.

Experts say they have witnessed a rare event that was not caused by a violent space collision or a close encounter with the Sun.

Instead, the asteroid, located 483 million kilometres from the Sun, was likely weakened over time by multiple small run-ins with other space objects, said the report in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Breakup ... This combination image made available by NASA shows a series of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope recording the disintegration of an asteroid. Picture: AP Photo/NASA, ESA, UCLA, D. Jewitt.

The latest Hubble pictures show the fragments drifting away from each other at a leisurely pace of 1.6km per hour - slower than a strolling human.

This type of event has been discussed by experts for several years but has never been reliably observed, until now.

Space first ... Hubble uncovered 10 objects, each with dusty tails. The four largest fragments are up to 656 feet across. Scientists say they've never seen anything like this before. Picture: AP Photo/NASA, ESA, UCLA, D. Jewitt.

Meanwhile, NASA announced that an asteroid measuring about 7.6 metres will pass safely past Earth today. The asteroid is likely to approach the Earth at a distance six times closer than the moon.

It comes just a day after another asteroid, this one named 2014 DX110, whizzed by Earth without incident.

Close call ... This graphic depicts the passage of asteroid 2014 EC past Earth today. The asteroid's closest approach is a distance equivalent to about one-sixth of the distance between Earth and the moon. Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech.