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Asteroids are scary things in the best case.
But none are as scary as the gigantic, skull-shaped object known as the Asteroid of Halloween's death.
It is officially known as TB145 asteroid 2015 and was last expanded on October 31, 2015, less than 302,000 miles from our planet, about 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
Mankind will have a second chance to take a closer look at the skull of space when it is expanded just after All Saints Eve in November 2018.
The threatening object is literally the ghost of a comet that was killed by the sun
It is thought to be a "dead comet" that has been radically altered in orbit around our star for millions of years and whose width is between 625 and 700 meters.
An asteroid is usually made up of rock or metal, while a comet is made up of ice and rock.
It was thought that the Halloween space rock could have been a comet until the ice evaporated over a long time, which means that it is "dead".
The comet would probably not do us any harm if it hit the Earth, because it could burn in the atmosphere and become a shooting star.
More: weird
We do not think of being in collision with our planet.
At the beginning of the year, Pablo Santos-Sanz, of the Astrophysical Institute of Andalusia, published an academic article detailing his observations on the subject.
He added that the asteroid of Halloween's death would not be as close to Earth during this year's visit as in 2017. It will zoom in about 24 million kilometers.
"Although this approach is not so favorable, we will be able to obtain new data that could help us better understand this mass and other similar masses close to our planet," the astronomer added.
On November 11th, the Halloween death comet will zoom in on Earth, but it should get closer much later in the 21st century.
Thomas G. Müller, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and co-author of the study, added: distance of about 20 lunar distances.
Our encounter with the asteroid of Halloween death in 2015 marked the closest approach to an object of this size since 2006.
The next time we will experience such a shave will come in August 2027.
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