While children go door-to-door asking Trick or Treat this Halloween an asteroid twice the size of a sports stadium will pass by Earth, narrowly avoiding a collision which could wipe out an entire continent.

Dubbed “The Great Pumpkin” by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the TB145 asteroid was discovered on October 10, 2015, by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS-1 on Haleakala, Maui, and is estimated to be about 400 metres in diameter. It will pass by Earth at 35 kilometres per second at about 4:00am (AEDT) on Sunday.

Astronomers will have the chance to observe the asteroid and by using robotic space probes they hope to capture radar images and other measurements, such as asteroid’s shape, dimensions, surface features and other characteristics.