As usual, astronomers are reassuring us that the asteroid Toutatis, which will be heading our way in September, won?t impact the Earth. And also as usual, warnings about an impending impact are flying across the internet. Who's telling the truth?

Alan M. MacRobert writes in Sky & Telescope that while astronomers insist it will be a flyby, 4179 Toutatis, which was first discovered in 1989 in France, will make its closest pass to Earth yet. On September 29, it will be the equivalent of four distances from the Earth to the Moon away from our planet. This is a lot of space, but it's also the closest it's been to us since 1353 and closest it will be until 2562.

Toutatis has an irregular, four-year orbit that carries it from the asteroid belt to just inside the orbit of Earth, so close flybys are frequent. It's shaped like a bowling pin and has an erratic, tumbling motion that makes its movements hard to predict. This sort of motion is usually caused by a collision with another asteroid in the past. Astronomer Steven Ostro says, "The rotation of Toutatis is a remarkable, well-preserved relic of the collision-related evolution of an asteroid."

NASA has measured its orbit to the extent that they know it won't hit the Earth for at least the next 65 years, and the chance of an impact is minimal for several hundred years after that. However, they want to pinpoint its orbit more exactly this time, so they can warn us about any impending collision in the future.

Half our Zeta Reticuli booklets are gone, but we still have enough left so that you can get one?if you hurry! Published by Astronomy Magazine in 1974, this is an original collector?s item examining the star map made by Betty Hill after her famous abduction with her husband, identifying the star system as Zeta Reticuli. How to get one? Subscribe for 6 months or one year and we?ll send you one free!

To learn how to spot Toutatis through your telescope, click here.