Creepy skull-shaped asteroid is returning next year to scare us

A scary skull-shaped asteroid is expected to pass by our planet Earth for the second time in early November 2018. Unfortunately, we might not be able to see it with our naked eye.

The asteroid 2015 TB145, dubbed as ‘Halloween asteroid’, first passed by Earth two years ago, but the frightening asteroid is on its way back to Earth again after three years. The asteroid got its name from its obvious features, being a weird skull-like shape and flying past Earth on Halloween on October 31, 2015 the last time.

Being as dark as coal, the space rock is almost 700 meters wide and in a way is rectangular in shape. It reflects only 5%-6% of the sunlight that hits it. According to Ney York Post, Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astrophysicist expressed, “This means that it is very dark, only slightly more reflective than charcoal.”

Photo credits: NASA

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However, there is no need to be worried as the asteroid will cruise by at a safe distance of almost 105 lunar distances from Earth, which is the distance between the Earth and the moon. The findings regarding this asteroid were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

According to BGR, the lead author of the study Thomas Müller explained, “The next slightly more exciting encounter will be around Halloween’s day in the year 2088, when the object approaches Earth to a distance of about 20 lunar distances. The encounter on Halloween’s day 2015 was the closest approach of an object of that size since 2006.”

Santos-Sanz also said, “Although this approach shall not be so favorable, we will be able to obtain new data that could help improve our knowledge of this mass and other similar masses that come close to our planet.”

Astronomers also suggest that this asteroid was once a comet in the past, which has since lost all its volatile compounds after numerous orbits around the Sun, and thus, is now dead rock flying through space.