Marshall Space Flight Center scientists and others around the world will keep a keen eye on a mountain-size asteroid that will zoom past Earth on Monday.

Also compared in size to two cruise ships, it's much larger than the house-sized asteroids that often come close, but it poses no threat to our planet. It does, however, offer a chance to get the closest a look at near-Earth asteroid that won't occur again until 2027, NASA officials said.

See a moving diagram of asteroid's proximity to Earth, below.

Asteroid 2004 BL86, which is more than 1,800 feet wide, will come within 745,000 miles of Earth, which is about three times the distance between Earth and the moon. Though traveling at more than 35,000 mph in space, it will appear like a slow-moving satellite from Earth, Universe Today reports, crossing two degrees (the width of four moons) in an hour.

Maximum brightness will be around 10:52 a.m., CST, on Monday and 10:07 a.m. CST on Tuesday, according to EarthSky.org, which says it will be observable by amateur astronomers with small telescopes and strong binoculars. Even at its peak brightness, the asteroid cannot be viewed with the unaided eye, EarthSky reported.

Astronomers with at least 6-inch diameter telescopes can get a sharp view and are encouraged to point their scopes at the constellation Cancer.

At 6:44 p.m. CST on Monday, the asteroid will be between the apparent position of Jupiter and the star Procyon. At that time, observers with computerized telescopes can point their instruments to star HIP 41843.

If you don't have a computerized telescope, EarthSky says to point it toward the famous open cluster M44 (Beehive or Praesepe), which lies between Jupiter and the star Pollux. On Tuesday, between 11 and 11:45 p.m. CST, the asteroid will be passing very close (eastern side) of this cluster.

The public is welcome to follow their observations via the Marshall Ustream feed. The public also can watch 2004 BL86's flyby in visible light (as opposed to radar observations) live online Monday via the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.

Scientists are eager to study 2004 BL86 to pinpoint its orbit, tracking the fast-moving asteroid using the 230-foot dish-shaped Goldstone antenna at NASA's Deep Space Network in California. They will observe its surface and even look for moons.

The public is welcome to follow their observations via the Marshall Ustream feed. The public also can watch 2004 BL86's flyby in visible light (as opposed to radar observations) live online Monday via the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.

"For objects that get this close, that are this large, the radar observations are really analogous to a spacecraft flyby in terms of the caliber of the data that we can get," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is the principal investigator for the Goldstone observations of the asteroid.

The resulting black-and-white images can reveal unprecedented details about asteroids, whereas most ground-based telescopes would see only a point of light.

Even though 2004 BL86 poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it's still a good idea to keep a close eye on the asteroid, Benner said.

"Really, it's an inexpensive form of insurance to monitor these objects on a regular basis," he told Space.com.

National Geographic also reports that this asteroid belongs to a group of 551 known near-Earth asteroids that have the potential for impact sometime in the future. Luckily, 2004 BL86 doesn't seem to have our number just yet.

The researchers expect to obtain resolutions as fine as 13 feet (4 m) per pixel, so the images of 2004 BL86 should reveal details as small as the length of a typical car. This will allow the scientists to assess how rugged or smooth the space rock's surface is.

Why is this important?

"The materials in asteroids represent the building blocks of the planets," said Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator on NASA's Dawn mission.

See five reasons Space.com says you should care about asteroids.

Additionally, if Benner and his colleagues get enough images as the object spins, they can start to reconstruct its three-dimensional shape in order to understand how it rotates. They also plan to search for any moons in tow. About 17 percent of asteroids in 2004 BL86's size range tend to have smaller objects trailing along with them.