The Slooh telescope service has captured images of the “spooky” Halloween asteroid, officially known as TB145. The live online observatory will also track the newly discovered asteroid as it completes its journey past Earth this Saturday.
The images were taken this week by telescopes at ESA's Optical Ground Station in the Canary Islands. It shows the asteroid, which will zoom past Earth at 125,000 kilometers per hour (78,000 miles per hour) on October 31, 2015 at a distance of just 480,000 kilometers (300,000 miles).
Frighteningly, this asteroid was only discovered on October 10, and it's travelling fairly close to Earth.
The asteroid is shown in this animation moving across the sky. The frames are give minutes apart. Image credit: Slooh
In a statement, Paul Cox, a host for Slooh, said: “It’s frightening to think an asteroid this size, approaching so close to Earth, was discovered only 21-days before its closest approach, which just happens to be on Halloween. If that doesn’t give you the chills, nothing will.”
He added: “Slooh members are tracking the asteroid every night in order to reduce the great uncertainty of its position, size, and highly unusual orbit – we can’t afford to lose sight of an object this big which has happened repeatedly in the past.”
Slooh will cover the approach of the asteroid in a live streamed online broadcast. Hosts from Slooh, along with a team of experts on asteroids and representatives from NASA, will discuss the dangers of near Earth asteroids, what would happened if an asteroid this size hit Earth and why they only discovered the asteroid a few weeks ago. You can check out the Slooh broadcast live on the player below on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. EDT / 9:30 a.m. PDT / 4:30 p.m. GMT.
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