A large asteroid discovered this month using a University of Hawaii observatory on Maui will make a close pass to Earth on Halloween, but astronomers say there’s no need to get spooked.

Asteroid 2015 TB145, discovered Oct. 10 by postdoctoral researcher Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS1 Telescope atop Haleakala, will pass within about 300,000 miles of Earth, quite close on an astronomical scale. By comparison, the moon is about 239,000 miles away.

Any asteroid pass within about 2 lunar distances is considered an eyelash width.

The asteroid is about 1,300 feet in diameter, much larger than the rock that created Meteor Crater in Arizona — estimated at 160 feet in diameter. That nickel-iron meteorite hit about 50,000 years ago at speed of about 28,000 mph, creating the equivalent of a 10-megaton explosion.

So a collision with 2015 TB145 would be catastrophic.

“It would be a big problem if it were to hit,” said UH astronomer Richard Wainscoat, the team leader on the discovery, by telephone Thursday. “The amount of energy is enormous. But fortunately it is not going to hit.”

He said the rock is 8,000 times more massive than the widely photographed Chelyabinsk meteor, which entered the atmosphere over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013.

Not only is it massive, but its speed relative to Earth is huge: 78,300 mph.

“We don’t want something like this hitting the earth,” Wainscoat said.

The asteroid, which NASA has dubbed “the Great Pumpkin,” is already under study by telescopes around the world, and amateur astronomers should be able to spot it as it moves rapidly across the sky the night of Oct. 30-31. The close approach at 7:05 a.m. Hawaii time will give scientists a chance to study it further by radar, which could reveal features on its surface as small as 6 feet.

The radio waves will be sent up from Goldstone, Calif., and will bounce back to receivers at Green Bank, W.Va., and Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

2015 TB145 has a weird orbit, which made it hard to find, Wainscoat said. Earth and the other planets orbit roughly on the same plane. But this asteroid orbits at a high angle relative to the ecliptic plane, and on a highly elliptical path that last brought it near Earth 30 years ago, astronomers calculate.

Pan-STARRS specializes in the detection of near-Earth objects, nicknamed NEOs.

According to the catalog of NEOs kept by the Minor Planet Center, based in Cambridge, Mass., this is the closest currently known approach by an object this large until asteroid 1999 AN10, at about 2,600 feet in diameter, comes within about 1 lunar distance in August 2027.

On Oct. 7 asteroid 2015 TQ21 came within 1 lunar distance, whizzing by at 44,740 mph. On Oct. 13, 2015 TC25 came within 0.3 lunar distance, with a relative velocity of 9,900 mph.