October 31, 2015 - Halloween and the Halloween asteroid TB145

Saturday October 31 is Halloween. It evolved from the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain. The Celts used the day to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. They also believed that the transition between seasons, from autumn to winter, was a bridge to the world of the dead. These days some countries celebrate Halloween with ghosts and ghouls and sweets and candy.

October 27 was a full moon, and a super moon. Known as the Hunter’s Moon, it is the advent of winter. It was the last super moon for 2015. There was one in August and September (a total lunar eclipse). Super moon is not the official name – it is actually the perigee of the moon. This super moon was not an eclipse, but as with all super moons, it was at its closest point to the Earth in its orbit. Therefore it looked brighter by 30% and bigger by 14%. The next super moon will be October 16, 2016.

Also on October 31 is the flyby of asteroid 2015 TB145. Because it occurs on Halloween it is called the Halloween asteroid. NASA is tracking the Halloween asteroid from its Deep Space Network at Goldstone in California. The asteroid will fly past Earth at a safe distance slightly farther than the moon’s orbit. It is estimated to be a 400-metre wide asteroid (1,300 feet). At its closest it will be 480,000 kilometres from Earth (300,000 miles) or 1.3 lunar distances. However it will be faint, so a small telescope will be needed to see it. It will have no detectable gravitational effect on Earth.

This will be the closest known approach to Earth by an object this large. The next one will be asteroid 1999 AN10, which is 800-metres wide (2,600 feet) approaching at 238,000 miles from Earth in August 2027.

The University of Hawaii’s Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS-1) discovered asteroid 2015 TB145 on October 10, 2015 as part of the NASA-funded Near-Earth Object Observation (NEOO) program.

Because of the concurrence of events – Halloween, the supermoon, and the asteroid – doomsdayers think the world will end tomorrow. I’m sorry to disappoint my doomsdayer friends, but I guarantee that the world will continue for a good while yet.

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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2015-323

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