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I think Jay posted this in the live chat. Pretty cool stuff.

As we all know by now, an asteroid called 2011 MD will pass unnervingly close to our planet on Monday. Although its orbit won’t put it on a collision course with Earth — I kinda wish it would, imagine the fireworks!* — it will get close enough to be deflected by our planet’s gravitational field.

SEE ALSO: INCOMING! Asteroid to Narrowly Miss Earth on Monday

But by how much will 2011 MD’s orbit be deflected? Courtesy of Pasquale Tricarico, Research Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, we can see just how close this asteroid will get to us through a series of animations he’s prepared from observational data.

“It is interesting to note that [2011 MD] will come closer than the GPS satellites, and also that it comes from the northern hemisphere, passes over the Earth’s south pole, and then is deflected so strongly that leaves the Earth back in the northern hemisphere,” Tricarico says on his website.