BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Cosmic Halloween

Eek! Screaming head with flaming hair. A planetary nebula, the remains of a sunlike star when the fuel runs out. The Flaming skull Nebula, catalogued as Sh2-68, is at least 45,000 years old. It's located in the constellation Serpens (the Snake).

The asteroid 2015 TB145, discovered on October 10, made its closest approach to Earth on the morning of Halloween, October 31, 2015. Appropriately for Halloween, the radar image made it look a bit like a skull. It's about 600 meters across, so it would do some severe damage if it had hit us. However it was farther away from us than the Moon, and we aren't in any danger of that hitting us. We have to remember that “close” astronomically isn't close as we normally think of it. However it was slightly unnerving that this object was only discovered a few weeks ago. The astronomers think that it's probably the remains of inactive comet.