Newly discovered asteroid making a close flyby of Earth on Halloween | ExtremeTech
Halloween night will be filled with costumed kids running from house to house to collect treats, but Earth itself is coming startlingly close to getting a treat of its own that day in the form of an
asteroid impact. NASA has confirmed that a large
asteroid just discovered a few days ago on October 10th will make the closest flyby of the Earth in almost a decade.
The asteroid is known by the snappy name 2015 TB145, and on October 31st it’s expected to get within 1.3 lunar distances of the Earth. That’s about 310,000 miles away. There is no danger of it hitting Earth, but it would have caused an awful mess if it had. 2015 TB145 is about 280 to 620 meters in diameter — the size of a large skyscraper. That’s big enough to cause widespread destruction in the impact region and global climate shifts. If it were to hit the ocean, a tsunami could cause even more damage. That is, of course, assuming it doesn’t break up in the atmosphere.
NASA describes the object’s velocity as “unusually high” at 35 km/s.
The last time a sizable asteroid passed closer to Earth was in July 2006 when 2004 XP14 made it to within 1.1 lunar distances. As you can tell from the name, we identified that object two years before its flyby. That’s still not a lot of time in the grand scheme of astronomy, but it’s a lot better than a few weeks. This is the closest known approach of an asteroid until August 2017 when NEO 1999 AN10 will get within 1 lunar distance — so, inside the orbit of the moon.
According to NASA, 2015 TB145 has a highly eccentric orbit around the sun. That means it’s only in Earth’s neighborhood briefly at two points in its orbit. This might explain why it was only detected a few weeks before the flyby. The observation was made back on October 10th with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii. It’s also not a particularly bright object.
At its closest approach, 2015 TB145 will have an apparent magnitude of 10, which is reasonably bright for an asteroid. You’ll be able to see it with a small telescope pointed toward the Orion constellation, but the moon is going to be almost full, making observation more challenging. This will happen late on October 30th into the early morning hours of Halloween west coast time.
Despite the small scare (just in time for Halloween), astronomers will be happy to have the opportunity to
test new imaging and radar tracking technologies that could come in handy when NEO 1999 AN10 swings past Earth in 12 years. The data might be useful in tracking other near-Earth objects and in detecting new ones earlier. You know, more than a few weeks in advance.
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Forget about this talk of nuking an asteroid to change its course.
We'll be lucky if we even spot it.