Grab your telescope. The asteroid known as Toutatis will make
its closest approach to Earth tonight. From Tuesday night to
Wednesday morning, the 3-mile long asteroid will be about 18
times the distance of the moon from the Earth. And if you miss
it Tuesday night, don't worry. The asteroid should be visible if
you have the right conditions, the right telescope and a good
star chart -- through the end of the week. Even at its closest
approach you won't be able to see Toutatis with the naked eye.
You'll need a small telescope. Of course, even if you find it,
it will still appear as a small point of light moving across the
night sky. To see what this asteroid really looks like, you'd
need something really, really big, such as the Goldstone Radar,
which looks like a whopping satellite dish 230 feet across.
Scientists who work at the Goldstone facility near Barstow have
been tracking Toutatis since Dec. 4 and posting images of the
asteroid on the Internet. The images are a little fuzzy, but
they give you a sense o