Check out the skull-shaped comet flying past Earth today
It’s black. It’s massive. It’s shaped like a skull. Meet the dead comet that will fly safely past Earth this Halloween.
At 10 a.m. on Halloween morning, a mysterious and vaguely skull-shaped body from space will hurtle past our planet, coming within 1.3 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Scientists had previously thought the object was a large asteroid with a funky orbit. However, new observations made on Oct. 30th suggest it is more likely a dormant comet that has shed its volatile materials after several turns around the sun.
The new measurements reveal that the extraterrestrial body is as dark as printer toner and generally round in shape. It also appears to be larger than previously thought. Early estimates suggested the space rock was about 1,300 feet in diameter, but in fact it it is closer to 2,000 feet long, or about the length of 5 1/2 football fields.
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The black areas that look sort of like eye sockets in the radar image above are likely pits or craters that may have been sculpted over time by impacts or the melting of ices, said Amy Mainzer, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Who would have though that this would have come with its own costume?” she said.
Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Planetary Institute in Tuscon, said one clue that the body might be a dormant comet rather than an asteroid is that it reflects 6% of light from the sun.
“While here on Earth we think that is pretty dark, it is brighter than a typical comet which reflects only 3 to 5% of the light,” he said in a statement. “That suggests it could be cometary in origin –- but as there is no coma evident, the conclusion is it is a dead comet.”
The object’s unusual orbit, at a pretty severe tilt with respect to the plane of the solar system, is another reason scientists believe it is cometary in origin.
It may seem spooky to have a large dead comet fly so near to Earth, but experts say there is nothing to worry about.
Although the dark body was only detected Oct. 10, its orbit is well understood. Even at its closest approach to Earth, it will still be 300,000 miles away, according to Paul Chodas who manages the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at JPL, in La Cañada.
And for scientists, the dead come’ts relatively close flyby presents an awesome research opportunity.
“When big things get this close, we can get a great look at them,” Mainzer said. “This is definitely an interesting object, and because it is so close, we are going to get all this great detail.”
Spooky science rules! Follow me @DeborahNetburn and “like” Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
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