This coming Halloween, people from around the world will be busy spooking each other with the usual scare tactics like trick-or-treating and dressing up like ghosts and monsters.
A Halloween scare, however, will come from outer space: A large and newly discovered asteroid will pass by Earth on Oct. 31, 2015, Earthsky.com reported citing data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The huge space rock, discovered only last Oct. 10 by the Pan-STARRS I telescope in Hawaii and nicknamed "2015 TB145," will pass our planet at 310,000 miles, or 1.3 times the Earth-moon distance.
With this distance, mankind need not worry about the possibility of the asteroid smashing into Earth. The enormous space rock will come closer to the moon than to Earth, NASA said.
Space enthusiasts can even have a glimpse of the passing asteroid, which will be in closest contact with planet Earth on 11:14 a.m. ET (15:14 UTC) on Oct. 31, 2015.
Those who want to check out the asteroid will have to bring out their telescope, since the space rock will only glow at an approximate magnitude of 10, or fainter than what the naked eye can see.
Nevertheless, the asteroid will be easy to spot, since it will appear to be moving slowly across a field of stars, although it is actually traveling at 78,000 miles or 126,000 km per hour.
The asteroid, which is estimated to have a diameter of 1,542 feet, can be seen near the constellation of Orion on the night of Oct. 30 to 31. Amateur observers are advised to use telescopes of 8″ in diameter or larger to better appreciate the passing space rock.
The approaching asteroid will be 28 times the size of the space rock, known as the Chelyabinsk meteor, which penetrated the Earth's atmosphere over Russia in February 2013.
According to NASA, the asteroid 2015 TB145 will be the biggest known space rock to pass near Earth until 2027. The next asteroid to make a comparable distance to Earth will be 1999 AN10, which will pass by Earth 12 years from now.
