A giant asteroid will be passing Earth tonight and its progress will be filmed and streamed live online.

The asteroid, 2000 EM26, is the size of three football fields and while it poses no threat to Earth, it will come within around 8.8 lunar distances from our planet – around 3,380,000km.

According to Space.com, the asteroid measures 270m in diameter and is travelling at a speedy 12.37km/s.

The asteroid will be visible from Earth from around 2am GMT (9pm EST) and will be streamed live online via the Slooh Space Camera.

Robotic telescope service Slooh has said that while it will not hit Earth, it is classed as a "potentially hazardous asteroid" and serves as a warning of the possible danger posed by asteroids.

"This is a subtle reminder of the dangers of asteroid impacts just one year after two historic events took place on 15 February," it said.

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The event referred to was the Russian meteorite that crashed into Earth in February 2012. The Chelyabinsk meteor was captured on film flying across the sky at around 69,000km/h.

It exploded mid-air generating a bright flash and a hot cloud of dust. The meteor fell in small pieces across Chelyabinsk, injuring over 1,000 people and causing damage to buildings in the area.

Paul Cox, technical and research director at Slooh, told Space.com: "We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids - sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth.

"Slooh's asteroid research campaign is gathering momentum with Slooh members using the Slooh robotic telescopes to monitor this huge population of potentially hazardous space rocks. We need to find them before they find us!"

Bob Berman, astronomer with Slooh, added: "On a practical level, a previously-unknown, undiscovered asteroid seems to hit our planet and cause damage or injury once a century or so, as we witnessed on 20 June , 1908 and 15 February, 2013.

"Every few centuries, an even more massive asteroid strikes us – fortunately usually impacting in an ocean or wasteland such an Antarctica. But the ongoing threat, and the fact that biosphere-altering events remain a real if small annual possibility, suggests that discovering and tracking all NEOs, as well as setting up contingency plans for deflecting them on short notice should the need arise, would be a wise use of resources."