A visitor arrives in our celestial neighborhood Monday night

Earth has a visitor from outer space Monday tonight.

It’s only here for a short time and it’s small.

“About 300 meters in diameter,” according to Elias Moten of the Space Foundation.

It’s not all that uncommon.

Moten said, “these types of asteroids only come by every few years.”

But it will be close. Asteroid 2004 BL86 will pass within 750,000 miles of Earth tonight.

That’s only 3 times as far as the Moon. In space terms it’s practically next door. And Moten says that if it were to hit the Earth: “it would have pretty catastrophic effects.”

Fortunately that won’t happen.

But what 2004 BL86 will do is give us a show.

It’s not unusual for asteroids to pass close to the Earth, but because they’re so small they’re normally hard to see with all but the largest telescopes that the astronomers use.

One of the neat things about this particular asteroid is that it will be bright enough to be seen with a small telescope.

While we’ll all get to see this celestial visitor, NASA wants to get a real close up look at an asteroid. They have missions planned that sound like science fiction.

“OSIRIS-REx is going to go land on an asteroid and bring back a sample,” said Moten.

OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in 2016 and return to Earth in 2023. It seems like an impossible mission, but there’s a reason to do what seems impossible.

“These rocks from space could hold a lot of information about how planets are formed,” said Moten.

So that astronomers can one day finally figure out answers to some of the greatest questions in science.

The next time that we’ll see an asteroid this large fly this close to Earth will be in 2027.

If you want to see asteroid 2004 BL86, you can look in the eastern sky Monday tonight near the constellation hydra.

The best viewing time is between 6 and 11 p.m.