An Italian astronomer has found the closest asteroid to the Sun.
Andrea Boattini said he spotted the new body at sunset while he was scanning all the asteroids currently visible.
''While I was observing them I suddenly saw another object, moving not very fast and in rather an anomalous way,'' said Boattini, 39, who works at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona.
''It was so bright at first I thought it was a comet''.
So far some 5,000 asteroids have been spotted crossing the Earth's orbit at some point. Only ten, on the other hand, have been found to travel inside the Earth's orbit - between the Earth and the Sun.
Boattini's discovery is the closest yet to the Sun, just 0.80 astronomical units (AUs) away.
The next two are 0.89 and 0.93 AUs from the Sun. Boattini says the new asteroid is ''large, about two kilometres across'', but does not pose a threat to the Earth.
''It's probably going to leave us in peace for a considerable length of time,'' he said.
The new chunk of space rock is expected to take the name of Boattini, who already has a comet named after him. The young scientist is an expert in asteroids and comets.
He specialises in Near Earth Objects (NEOs), of which there are four groups.
His latest discovery is one of the very rare IEOs (Inner Earth Objects).
