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Skull-Shaped ‘Halloween Asteroid’ Will Zoom Past Earth Tonight

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence ... right?

Re/code / Skull by Shawn Hempel / Thinkstock

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … a piece of dead space rock that looks sorta like a skull!

This is the scene you can look forward to late Saturday when a pretty sizable asteroid is set to fly past Earth. The space rock, beautifully named 2015 TB145, is about 2,000 feet in diameter and is the biggest hunk of space rock expected to fly this close to Earth until 2027, according to a post on NASA’s website.

But the real fascinating tidbit here — and those of you into ghost stories should listen up — is that the asteroid, when caught at juuuuust the right angle, looks a little like a skull. Here’s a photo NASA shared on Facebook to prove it:

So an asteroid shaped like a skull is flying by Earth late on Halloween night. What could go wrong??

Actually, nothing, according to scientists. The rock will pass 302,000 miles away, and researchers don’t expect it will have any effect on the Earth or the moon. In fact, you probably won’t even be able to see it. “It is expected to be fairly faint, so night-sky Earth observers would need at least a small telescope to view it,” NASA says.

For those who want to give it a try, the asteroid is set to fly by at 10 pm PT. Here’s a cool video from NASA about how it plans to observe the rock from a high-powered telescope in the Mojave Desert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQoMAWTAxY4

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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