Halloween's surprise asteroid: who can see it

You may have heard: an unexpected asteroid has appeared, and it'll be zooming by our planet on Halloween. The asteroid, called 2015 TB145, wasn't spotted until October 10, and first surfaced in a NASA report. The asteroid is notable not only because of the date of its flyby, but also because of its distance. Relatively speaking, the asteroid will come really close to Earth, making it a special time for those who enjoy monitoring and studying space rocks.

A mere 1.3 lunar distances will lie between Earth and the asteroid, the size of which ranges somewhere between 918ft and 2034ft in diameter. That's certainly not close enough to cause any sort of worry — no, despite what your paranoid Facebook friends say, the world won't be ending on Halloween. We might get some cool NASA pics from it, though.

Still, this will be the closest flyby to take place until August 2027, at which point a celestial object called 1999 AN10 will come within a single lunar distance from our planet. The last closest flyby before this upcoming one happened back in summer 2006 by the object 2004 XP14, which came within 1.1 lunar distances.

Given that the latest asteroid will be coming so closely to our planet, it's no surprise that it'll be visible. As expected, though, you'll only be able to see it if you're in a certain region – in this case, the Northern Hemisphere. You'll need a telescope to see it, though, as well as a cloud-free night.

SOURCE: The Washington Post