If you think asteroids are rare, it's only because they're so small and dark and hard to see. An eye-opening new video (above) shows what the night sky would look like if we could see the near-Earth asteroids astronomers have discovered -- it's quite a swarm.

"We're essentially flying around the sun through this population of asteroids with our eyes closed," Scott Manley, the astronomer who created the animation and posted it to YouTube, says in the video.

The interactive video lets you pan around the night sky as if you were standing in the darkness with a powerful telescope. Manley created it to spotlight the all-too-real danger that asteroids pose to humanity.

Thinking about the threat isn't much fun, but we have to say that watching the video is. Enjoy!