A 'death comet' with a skull face will pass earth November 11 about 25 million miles away
The asteroid with a skull-like face will make its second trip near earth in three years after flying a worrisome 302,000 miles from our planet on October 31, 2015.
This year, the comet will be a much more comfortable 24 million miles away on November 11, Mother Nature Network reported.
The comet, officially recognized as 2015 TB145, has a few nicknames including 'Halloween asteroid', 'death comet' and 'The Great Pumpkin' by NASA.
The 2000-foot-wide rock gets the name 'death comet' not only because of its human skull face, but because it's believed to have been long-dead.
A chart form 2015 shows the comets last visit on Halloween 2015 about 302,000 miles away from earth
'We found that the object reflects about 6 percent of the light it receives from the sun,' said Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona said in 2015.
'That is similar to fresh asphalt, and while here on Earth we think that is pretty dark, it is brighter than a typical comet which reflects only 3 to 5 percent of the light. That suggests it could be cometary in origin - but as there is no coma evident, the conclusion is it is a dead comet,' Reddy said.
The Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia captured the asteroid in the early morning hours of Halloween 2015 during a different period in its rotation.
The 2015 flyby was the closest the eerie comet has come to earth.
In this lifetime, the comet's next closest visit will occur on November 1, 2088, at an even more comfortable distance of just over 5 million miles from earth.
The comet has a human skull face and has been dubbed the Halloween asteroid (illustration)
Reader Comments
26,000-pound dinosaur discovered in South Africa was Earth's largest land animal
If humans had lived 200 million years ago, they would have marveled at the largest dinosaur of its time. It's name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn." The recently discovered fossil of a new...Which came first, the dinosaur or the theory of evolution?
Not judging, mind you....just curious.
2015 TB145 is 600m across - the illustration is based on radio frequency images taken at Arecibo Observatory
No company, even "saints" like NASA and SpaceX, is going to tell their customers that a service is delivered via a very cheap option (balloons) if they can con those customers into believing the service is provided by a very expensive option ($60 million dollar rocket launches)