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.
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. Astronomers also determined that the asteroid likely completes one rotation every 2.94 hours and that it reflects just 5 or 6 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
Astronomers also determined that the asteroid likely completes one rotation every 2.94 hours and that it reflects just 5 or 6 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
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| Credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF |
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