The Screaming Skull Asteroid is coming to an orbit near you!  No, this isn’t the name of Asa’s fantasy rock band.  This is an actual asteroid headed our way.  Cruising at a distance of 24 million miles away from Earth, the Screaming Skull Asteroid will be passing by us on November 11, 2018.  However, before you gather your friends for the ultimate intergalactic rock show, you may want to read this first.

Officially known as “Asteroid 2015 TB145,” it first came screaming past Earth on Halloween in 2015.  At that time fuzzy images of the small asteroid generated from radar data picked up by the National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico revealed a roughly spherical rock showing indentations vaguely resembling hollow eye sockets, a nose hole and a dark area that could be a mouth.  Hence the nickname of the “Screaming Skull Asteroid,” as well as the “Death Comet,” “Death Asteroid,” “Halloween Asteroid,” and “The Great Pumpkin.”  Luckily for us though, there’s nothing to worry about…this time.

To put it in perspective, at 24 million miles away from Earth, this peculiar disembodied head shaped asteroid is about a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and 105 times the distance of the Moon from Earth.  Therefore, according to Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Center for Near Earth Object Studies, it will only be a speck of light when it passes the Earth.  In fact, it will be so far away scientists won’t be able to tell if it retained it’s skull-like appearance.  We’ll have to wait until it’s next closest pass on November 1, 2088 at a mere 5 million miles away to know for certain if it should be regaled as the ultimate in heavy metal tributes.

However, scientists can still learn a lot from this creepy asteroid, which by some accounts is described as ghost-like due to it’s odd appearance.  The asteroid may actually be an extinct comet that has lost its water and other volatile materials after many laps around the sun.  Thus making the comet’s telltale feature of a tail disappear.  Asteroid or dead comet, whatever it is, at just 2,047 feet wide, Earth has nothing to worry about if it was closer.

Despite the Screaming Skull Asteroid being relatively harmless and more of a novelty this November, you have to ask yourself is it really an asteroid?  Or is it some sort of intergalactic tour bus driven by an Alien rock band as they scream through the universe?  At least that’s what Asa would like to believe!