Elizabeth Weise

USATODAY

An asteroid the size of three football fields passed by the Earth Monday night

Called 2000 ME26%2C it was 2 million miles away at its closest

So many watched a website streaming the asteroid that the site crashed several times

Earth had a close encounter Monday evening as an asteroid as big as three football fields whizzed by at 27,000 mph.

The asteroid was never considered a threat. The closest it came to Earth was about 2 million miles.

Dubbed 2000 EM26, it was a rocky body about 885 feet in diameter

The asteroid's pass was streamed by the astronomy site Slooh.com.

The images the site showed came from a telescope located in Dubai. They showed a dark night sky filled with stars but with no asteroid visible.

The technical team at Slooh.com spent Monday night reviewing the images but were "not seeing a lot of detail," said technical director Patrick Paolucci.

Astronomers knew the asteroid would be "a little fainter than Pluto" said Slooh astronomer Bob Berman.

Some watching and commenting on Twitter complained the images were boring.

Others noted that boring was a good outcome. Having an asteroid hit the Earth, while "interesting," would have been a very bad outcome, they said.

One watcher commented, "Guys... this is astronomy, not a Hollywood film."

Asteroids are small rocky planetoids that revolve around the sun but are too small to be considered planets.

2000 EM26 was discovered March 5, 2000.

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The asteroid's passage comes a year and two days after an asteroid ripped through the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia. That asteroid damaged thousands of buildings and was felt over a very wide area. It was about 65 feet across.