UK Astronomers Observe Asteroid Before It Crashes Into Earth

This interesting article tells the story of how an asteroid was tracked before entering the atmosphere for the first time last year.

Link

Only four and a half hours before impact, they were able to use the ISIS spectrograph on the William Herschel Telescope to measure how light reflected from its surface.

UK astronomers, using the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) William Herschel Telescope on La Palma, observed a rare asteroid as it was hurtling towards our planet and have captured the only spectrum of it before it exploded in our atmosphere.
This is the very first time that an asteroid that hit the Earth has been studied before entering our atmosphere, allowing the scientists to predict whether it would explode and break up in the atmosphere or reach the ground - which determines whether an asteroid poses any threat.
The results of the international collaboration studying the asteroid are published in this week's (March 26th) issue of Nature.

Not much to add just wanted to share with the members who are interested in this subject.

That is just great. Maybe they should do more skywathcing since these babies are popping out of the blue, so to speak...

'they usualy travel in pairs...'

It is not easy to spot an asteroid.
How did they do it?
Too technical for us to follow perhaps.