Asteroid zoomed near Earth on Wednesday, astronomers said

According NASA, the asteroid was an estimated 187 to 427 feet wide and came within about 45,000 miles of Earth.

The rock was a shock: “It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” Michael Brown, an associate professor in Australia with Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, told the Washington Post. “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”