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Asteroids, Observing

February 16th, 2010

Asteroid Might be Visible to Naked Eye on Feb. 17

Asteroid Vesta as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/ESA/U of Md./STSci/Cornell/SWRI/UCLA

An asteroid could be visible with binoculars, or even the naked eye on Wednesday, February 17, 2010. No, it's not coming close to Earth, although this second most massive object in the asteroid belt will be at its closest point to Earth in its orbit, about 211,980,000 kilometers (131,700,000 miles) away. Asteroid Vesta – one of the asteroids that the Dawn spacecraft will visit – will be at opposition on Wednesday, meaning it is opposite the sun as seen from Earth, and is closest to us. Vesta is expected to shine at magnitude 6.1, and that brightness should make it visible for those with clear skies and a telescope, but perhaps even those blessed with excellent vision and little or no light pollution. Vesta will be visible in the eastern sky in the constellation Leo, and will continue to be visible — although less so — in the coming months.
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February 2nd, 2010

Hubble Takes A Look at Possible Asteroid Collision

Hubble Views of Comet-like Asteroid P/2010 A2. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

We reported earlier that on January 6, 2010, ground-based observatories may have spotted evidence that two asteroids had collided in the asteroid belt. Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken a look at the mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust. With Hubble's sharp vision, astronomers believe a head-on collision between two asteroids has actually occured. Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before.
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January 22nd, 2010

Asteroid Detection, Deflection Needs More Money, Report Says

Are we ready to act if an asteroid or comet were to pose a threat to our planet? No, says a new report from the National Research Council. Plus, we don't have the resources in place to detect all the possible dangerous objects out there. The report lays out options NASA could follow to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could potentially cross Earth's orbit, and says the $4 million the U.S. spends annually to search for NEOs is insufficient to meet a congressionally mandated requirement to detect NEOs that could threaten Earth. "To do what Congress mandated NASA to do is going to take new technology, bigger telescopes with wider fields," said Don Yeomans, Manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office, speaking at the American Geophysical Union conference last month.
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January 20th, 2010

Asteroids Zipping Too Close to Earth Can Experience Seismic Activity

Artist concept of an NEA.

An asteroid's orbit can be altered if it travels in the vicinity of Earth. But astronomers are finding the effects Earth has on space rocks go far beyond just orbital alterations. Richard Binzel of MIT says that Earth has considerable influence on asteroids — and from a distance much larger than previously thought. He has determined that if an near-Earth asteroid (NEA) travels within a certain range of Earth, roughly one-quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon, it can experience a "seismic shake" strong enough to bring bright, new regolith to its surface. This new finding has helped answer the question of how some asteroids appear to have fresh surfaces, as well as shedding new light on where most meteorites come from.
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January 19th, 2010

Asteroid Collision May Have Created Comet-like Object

P/2010 A imaged by Dr. Robert McMillan at Kitt Peak, Arizona. Credit: Spacewatch/U of Arizona

A strange comet-like object discovered on January 6, 2010 may actually be the result of a collision between two asteroids. Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey in New Mexico spotted an object in the asteroid belt, called P/2010 A that looked "fuzzy," with a tail like a comet rather than a speck of light like a normal asteroid. But comets don't normally reside in the asteroid belt, and the object's orbit is all wrong for a comet. While the asteroid belt is made up of debris from the "leftovers" of our solar system, and like the remains of early crashes between giant rocks, astronomers haven't witnessed a collision before.
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January 13th, 2010

Images and Videos of 2010 AL30

Series of 30 15 second exposures tracking on 2010 AL30 between 07:18:16 and 07:27:29 GMT - Credit: Patrick Wiggins

Amateur astronomers heeded the call of making observations of the small asteroid 2010 AL30, which whizzed by Earth today. Here are some of the great images and videos captured by the amateur astronomy community, which will help the professionals determine the exact orbit, and also perhaps what exactly this unusual asteroid is. The object, which has been estimated to be between 10-15 meters (30 -50 feet) across, is likely a natural object, but it hasn't officially been ruled out that it might be man-made, i.e., a spent rocket booster, from perhaps the Venus Express mission. The folks who are apt to make the determination are those who work with the 70-meter radio dish at Goldstone. I corresponded with Lance Benner from the Goldstone facility, and he said, "We're still working with the data so it's still too early to say."

We'll keep you posted, but in the meantime, enjoy some of the images and videos of 2010 AL30's flyby. Above, NASA Solar System Ambassador Patrick Wiggins in Utah took a series of exposures and combined them into a "movie." He used a C-14 @ f/5.5 telescope and SBIG ST-10 binned 3×3 using a clear filter. The Field of View is about 18 x 26 arc minutes.
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December 30th, 2009

Russia May Head Mission to Deflect Asteroid Apophis

Orbital path of Apophis. Credit: NASA NEO Program

Russia is considering sending a spacecraft to deflect a large asteroid and prevent a possible collision with Earth, according to a radio interview by the head of the country's space agency. Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, and said NASA, ESA, the Chinese space agency and others would be invited to join the project. Apophis is a 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid that was spotted in 2004. It is projected to come within 29,450 kilometers (18,300 miles) of Earth in 2029, and currently has an estimated 1-in-250,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036.

A panel at the recent American Geophysical Union conference stressed that asteroid deflection is a international issue.
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December 29th, 2009

Where To Next for NASA's Solar System Exploration?

From top to bottom, pictured are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid.From top to bottom, pictured (not to scale) are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid. These three celestial bodies from our solar system are possible candidates for NASA's next space venture.

Where is NASA going next to probe our solar system? The space agency announced today they have selected three proposals as candidates for the agency's next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system. The proposed missions would probe the atmosphere and crust of Venus; return a piece of a near-Earth asteroid for analysis; or drop a robotic lander into a basin at the moon's south pole to return lunar rocks back to Earth for study. All three sound exciting!
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December 27th, 2009

Ceres

Now THAT is a dwarf planet: The size comparison of the Earth, Moon and Ceres (NASA)

Ceres is by far the largest and most massive asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is approximately the size of Texas or 975km x 909km with a mass of 9.5×10²⁰. It actually represents one third of all of the mass of the asteroid belt. It has enough mass to achieve self gravity, which is a major requirement to be considered a dwarf planet. It is the smallest of the currently recognized dwarfs. It revolves around the sun every 1679.819 days with a very small axial tilt. The surface is relatively warm. The asteroid peak temperature is thought to be in the neighborhood of -38°C(235 K). Ceres has a visual brightness magnitude of +6.9 to +9. When it is at the brightest point possible, Ceres is nearly bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. It can be seen with binoculars whenever it is above the horizon on a completely dark night.

Ceres was discovered on New Years Day in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi. Piazzi was a monk and astronomer in Sicily. He was also the founding director of the Palermo Astronomical Observatory. Ceres was discovered using the Titius-Bode Law that predicts the position of planets based on a mathematical equation of their distance from the Sun. This law predicted the position of Uranus and led to the false belief that Ceres was a planet.

The Dawn space mission is scheduled to visit Ceres in 2015 after stopping by Vesta in 2011. There had been some problems with Dawn's ion propulsion system, but it was reignited on June 8, 2009. As of June 15, 2009, Dawn is only 801 days away from Vesta on its way to Ceres. This space mission hopes to be the first to orbit and observe two planetary bodies, making spaceflight history.

Ceres has gone through a lot of reclassifications over its known history. In the beginning it was thought to be the eight planet. That lasted a short 50 years. It was then relegated to asteroid status, until the new system of classification brought a little more prominence as a dwarf planet. Who knows what the new findings by the Dawn space mission will bring to the scientific community and how it will effect this storied dwarf.

Here on Universe Today we have a great article about the possibility of life on Ceres. Follow this link for a good article about Ceres. Astronomy Cast offers a good episode about another dwarf planet, Pluto, and what lies beyond.

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November 26th, 2009

Comets Posing as Asteroids (or is the the other way around?)

Images of known MBCs from UH 2.2-meter telescope data. Credit: Henry Hsieh

Asteroids are rocky bodies which belong between Mars and Jupiter. Comets are icy bodies that belong way out beyond Pluto. So what are comet-like objects doing in the asteroid belt?

Surprise! Unknown Asteroid Buzzed Earth

Trajectory of Asteroid 2009 VA Past Earth on November 6, 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL

A previously undiscovered asteroid came within 14,000 km (8,700 miles) of Earth last week, and astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before closest approach. On Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST a 7 meter asteroid, now called 2009 VA, came only about 2 Earth radii from impacting our home planet. This is the third-closest known non-impacting Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid.
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November 9th, 2009

Camera Network Spies Anomalous Meteorite

The Bunburra Rockhole meteorite originates from a different asteroid than most Earth-impacing meteorites of its kind. Image Credit:Imperial College London A network of time-lapse cameras set up in the Nullarbor Plain desert of Western Australia has allowed researchers to track a fallen meteorite to the ground, and enabled them to determine its original orbit and parent body. The meteorite has a composition different than that of other meteors, leading researchers to believe that it originates from a different parent body than most meteorites that impact Earth. The Desert Fireball Network, a project coordinated by the Imperial College of London, was able to track the meteor when it entered the atmosphere, giving researchers an impact location and information on where it originated. Read more…

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October 30th, 2009

Asteroid Explosion over Indonesia

The dusty tail as a result of an asteroid explosion over Bone, Indonesia on October 8th.

This has taken awhile to filter into the Western press, but an asteroid exploded over the town of Bone,Indonesia on October 8th at around 11am local time. Initially, locals called the police to report that a plane had crashed, or that an earthquake shook the ground, as reported in the Jakarta Globe. The Jakarta Post quoted Thomas Djamaluddin, head of the Lapan Center for Climate and Atmosphere Science Implementation as saying that the explosion was due to a meteorite or bit of space junk that had entered the Earth's atmosphere. As it turns out after further analysis, the explosion was due to an asteroid about 5-10 meters (15-30 feet) in diameter exploding in the air between 15 and 20 km (nine to 12 miles) above sea level. Nobody was injured as a result of the explosion, but it evidently caused quite a scare with the local population! Read more…

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October 19th, 2009

Giant Impact Near India — Not Mexico — May Have Killed Dinosaurs

Three-dimensional reconstruction of the submerged Shiva crater (~500 km diameter) at the Mumbai Offshore Basin, western shelf of India from different cross-sectional and geophysical data. The overlying 4.3-mile-tick Cenozoic strata and water column were removed to show the morphology of the crater.

A huge, mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater ever found on Earth. And if a new study is right, this impact may supercede the one that created the Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula as what may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers have been studying a 500-kilometer-wide (300-mile-wide) depression on the Indian Ocean seafloor which was likely created by a bolide perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter. Such an event would have triggered worldwide climate changes, including intensified volcanism, that led to mass extinction.
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October 13th, 2009

Asteroid Pallas is Also a Protoplanet

Hubble images of the asteroid Pallus.

Some objects in the solar system are in a "gray area," and can be classified under more than one heading. Add the asteroid Pallas to that group. New close-up images of Pallas from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the second largest asteroid in the solar system appears to be a protoplanet, as well.
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