This image of asteroid 2015 TB145 was generated using radar data collected by the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF
Posted on 12/21/2017 12:52:16 PM PST by BenLurkin
Astronomers will soon get another look at the big, ghoulishly weird space rock that buzzed Earth on Halloween three years ago.
The roughly 2,100-foot-wide (640 meters) Halloween asteroid 2015 TB145 gave Earth a close shave on Oct. 31, 2015, coming within just 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of our planet. (For perspective, the moon orbits at an average distance of about 239,000 miles, or 384,600 km.)
A Halloween flyby was quite appropriate, it turned out: Observations made at the time by a variety of instruments revealed that 2015 TB145 looks like an enormous skull, at least from some angles.
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The asteroid may actually be an extinct comet that has lost its water and other volatile materials after many laps around the sun, researchers have said. Each of those laps takes 3.04 Earth years — which means 2015 TB145 will make another swing by our planet in mid-November 2018.
that’s pretty small, but big for a skull.
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