The Halloween asteroid returns to his rendezvous with Earth
The Halloween asteroid returns to his rendezvous with Earth
Its official name is 2015 TB145 but the media have given him various nicknames: Halloween asteroid, Great Pumpkin, the comet of Death and even asteroid skull, for the aspect he adopts under certain lighting conditions.
It was discovered on October 10, 2015 with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii (USA), but soon NASA and astronomers from all over the world directed their instruments towards this object when they verified that during the night of Halloween of that year it passed very close of the Earth: at only 486,000 km, about 1.3 times the distance that separates us from the Moon.
Since then 2015 TB145 has continued its journey around the Sun, crossing the orbits of Mercury, Venus and Mars, and now it returns to pass close to our planet, although much farther than the previous time. There is no need to fear any collision or effect on the earth's surface.
On this occasion the closest asteroid approach will occur on November 11, when it will be almost 40 million km from us, about 105 times the average distance between Earth and Moon (DL).
"Actually this year's approach is not considered a close step itself, since for that it would have to be less than a few tens of DL, which will not happen again until 2085 and, even so, will not be so close as in 2015, "says the astronomer Pablo Santos-Sanz of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and co-author of a study on 2015 TB145.
The official name of the Halloween asteroid is 2015 TB145, an object that looks like a human skull under certain lighting conditions. (Photo: José Antonio Peñas / SINC)
"Anyway," he adds, "although the conditions for the observations are now not as favorable as they were three years ago, new data will be collected about this near-Earth object (NEO) that can help know him better. Its low brightness and distance makes this time only visible with large telescopes, such as the routine tracking of NASA or ESA.
This dark asteroid is about 650 meters in diameter, its rotation period is around five hours, it takes 3.04 years to complete its orbit and the reflectivity or albedo of its surface is 6%, which means that it reflects approximately 6% of the light that it receives from the Sun.
By its type of orbit, 2015 TB145 is considered an Apollo-type asteroid, although astronomers think that it may actually be an ancient comet that lost its volatile compounds after multiple steps around the Sun.
The difference between the two types of objects is not always easy. In general, asteroids are more rocky and metallic while comets have a greater proportion of ice with some rock.
The orbits also tend to be different, but the limits between them are becoming more diffuse. In any case, both were formed about 4,600 million years ago when our solar system was born and have witnessed its evolution. (Source: SINC)
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