See the Asteroid. See the Asteroid Spin

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a video of asteroid 2014 HQ124--what had been dubbed "the Beast" by some when it was discovered in April because it was a) expected to fly close to Earth and b) big enough to destroy a nice chunk of civilization if it struck. As it turned out, the asteroid flew by on Sunday at a distance of 776,000 miles�that funny sound you might have heard was a collective "phew" being uttered in many languages.

What's cool about the images is that they're "among the best radar images of a near-Earth asteroid ever obtained," NASA says. In some ways, the video looks crude, but that's because computer graphic animation has created picture-perfect images in our collective imaginations of what objects in outer space are supposed to look like. It's humbling to be reminded that we really don't know much about the universe, visually speaking, which means science fiction writers still have plenty of room to maneuver.