Tag Archives: Asteroids

Across the Universe: Everything You Know Is Wrong

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This entry is part 40 of 180 in the series Across the Universe

’Oumuamua is not the only odd thing in the outer solar system… this column dates from November, 2004, in the Tablet, and was first published here in 2015. The latest news from out where Pluto orbits has brought to my mind that ‘60s satire of TV science shows, “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” Readers of this column may remember how surprised we were last spring [2004] to find an object, since named Sedna, orbiting nearly twice as far from the Sun as any previously discovered solar system body. That far away, it must be pretty big to reflect even the meager bit of sunlight that we see glancing off its surface; perhaps as big as Pluto itself? How big? That depends on how bright its surface is. We know from their motions how far away from the Sun (and us) Sedna and the other Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) lie. And we can measure how much light from them reaches our telescopes. … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: First scout

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This entry is part 2 of 180 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in November 2017 In the month after its discovery we were able to train some of the largest telescopes in the world on the new visitor to our solar system (that I wrote about here), a small body whose orbit indicates that it is had come to us from outside our own solar system. “We’ve been expecting for twenty years to find some body on an orbit like this,” explained Brett Gladman to me. He’s an astronomer at the University of British Columbia who specializes in the faint distant objects of our solar system. (I was visiting Vancouver in November 2017.) He wasn’t surprised that its path was almost perpendicular to the plane where our sun’s planets orbit. There’s no reason why it couldn’t come from any direction, since it is not tied to our system. He wasn’t surprised that it was small, barely visible to our biggest telescopes. “In space, collisions mean … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: The Impact of Asteroids

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This entry is part 4 of 180 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in November 2016 When I first arrived at the Vatican Observatory, more than 20 years ago, I decided to take advantage of its extensive meteorite collection by doing a systematic measurement of meteorite densities. Why? Mostly because no one else had done it before; no one had ever had both the access to such a collection, and the time to make such a survey. (It’s taken more than twenty years, and the work continues.) Soon after I started publishing my first results, spacecraft began visiting the asteroids that were the source of these meteorites, measuring their densities as well. The first surprise was that the asteroids were far less dense than the meteorites derived from them… showing that the asteroids were not solid rocks but rather, loose piles of meteoritic rubble. Our meteorite data allows us to make specific, quantitative estimates of the actual rock and metal content to be found within a … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Spicy planet stories

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This entry is part 38 of 180 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in October, 2006. We first ran it here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015 Doing science has often been compared to reading a mystery novel; the hunger to know “whodunit” keeps us turning the pages. But what stops us from just skipping to the last page, and moving on to the next book? Perhaps a better metaphor is a spice cake. The real pleasure of the process lies in the spicy experience of wondering. Actually finding out is just the icing on the cake. At the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society, held earlier this month [2006] in Pasadena, California near the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), dozens of little slivers of spice cake were on offer. A wonderful little asteroid system, called 1999 KW4, passed within half a million kilometers of the Earth about five years ago; it’s taken that long to analyze the … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Souvenirs from Space

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This entry is part 36 of 180 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in October, 2004; it ran here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015 Typhoon 23 and I arrived in Japan on the same day. My mission (I can’t speak for the typhoon) was to attend an international workshop on sample returns from asteroids. Our hosts were the  scientists and engineers of  the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who are eagerly awaiting the arrival next summer of their spacecraft, Hayabusa, at asteroid Itokawa. (The remarkable challenges and eventually successes of Hayabusa can are described nicely at its Wikipedia site.) Astronomers usually have to be content with observing their objects from afar. But nothing beats actually going to a place to see what it’s really like. Itokawa is a potato-shaped lump of rock less than half a kilometer in diameter that apparently drifted into our neighborhood from the asteroid belt; though it looks like a typical asteroid, its orbit is not out beyond Mars but rather much … Continue reading →

Music Inspired by Astronomy, Part 1

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This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Music Inspired by Astronomy

Andy Fraknoi is a well-known astronomy popularizer and friend of Br. Guy Consolmagno. Andy has an astronomy education website, on which he has compiled the “New Annotated Catalog of 250+ Pieces of Music Inspired by Good Astronomy.” Andy’s music list is rather extensive, and is split into multiple astronomical categories; Andy also includes links to YouTube videos so you can listen to his music selections. I will post each category individually in a series, starting with asteroids: Gloria Coates Among the Asteroids on At Midnight (on Tzadik). A 1962 piece for string quartet, written for a production of The Little Prince; she has other music with science titles, so we took the liberty of including this. Kaija Saariaho Asteroid 4179: Toutatis (with The Planets by Holst, conducted by Simon Rattle, on EMI Classics CD). Short piece based on the complex rotational motion of this near-Earth asteroid. Brett Dean Komarov’s Fall (with The Planets by Holst, conducted by Simon Rattle, on EMI Classics CD). … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – May 22, 2018

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This entry is part 44 of 78 in the series In the Sky This Week

Jupiter has almost left the morning sky; Mars and Saturn are slowly making their way southward. I was a bit surprised to catch a flyover of the International Space Station when I copied this image from Stellarium! Jupiter is in the southeastern sky after sunset, and is a great observing target. The Moon The Moon is at first quarter on the 22nd, and then a waxing gibbous until full on the 29th. This whole week will be great for observing the moon through telescopes. The Moon is in the southwestern sky after sunset for the next few days. The Sun We have a spot! Active Region (AR) 2710 is rotating into view on the Sun – it’s so small it may be difficult to see through telescopes for a few days. AR2710 has a lot of coronal loop activity above it (left side of video), and coronal holes remain at both poles. Surprisingly, there are no Earthward facing coronal holes along … Continue reading →

NASA Space Place: What Is the Asteroid Belt?

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What Is the Asteroid Belt? By Linda Hermans-Killiam There are millions of pieces of rocky material left over from the formation of our solar system. These rocky chunks are called asteroids, and they can be found orbiting our Sun.  Most asteroids are found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They orbit the Sun in a doughnut-shaped region of space called the asteroid belt. Asteroids come in many different sizes—from tiny rocks to giant boulders. Some can even be hundreds of miles across! Asteroids are mostly rocky, but some also have metals inside, such as iron and nickel. Almost all asteroids have irregular shapes. However, very large asteroids can have a rounder shape. The asteroid belt is about as wide as the distance between Earth and the Sun. It’s a big space, so the objects in the asteroid belt aren’t very close together. That means there is plenty of room for spacecraft to safely pass through the belt. In fact, … Continue reading →

A Visit to Meteor Crater National Landmark

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Asteroids and meteorites are right on the top of my list of interests when it comes to astronomy. Visiting Meteor Crater National Landmark in Arizona has been a “bucket-list” item for my wife and I for a LONG time. We visited the crater on Easter Sunday 2018, and it was simply spectacular! My first sight of the crater through a window in the museum took my breath away. The museum at the visitor’s center was excellent – it had several displays showing different features of the crater and details of its history. I was pleased to see displays describing the 1908 Tunguska and the recent 2013 Chelyabinsk impact events. The Holsinger meteorite is the largest metal fragment found from the impact; I have an image of the Holsinger meteorite, in my asteroid lecture – now I get to replace it with this: If you should ever get a chance to visit the crater, be sure to take the 1-mile guided tour along the crater rim – it … Continue reading →

New Orbit Visualizations for the JPL Small-Body Database Browser

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I frequently refer to the JPL Small-Body Database Browser for information on asteroids and comets. The website has brand new visualization software that beautifully displays the orbits of asteroids and comets, and allows you to zoom and rotate-around easily using the mouse – the same way as in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System. So what’s the first thing I did when I found out about this? I searched for my wife’s asteroid: 117852 Constance: You can set the date from 1600-2199, select which major solar system bodies you’d like to see, take screen-shots, and view a time-lapse of the body orbiting the Sun. About the only thing the new tool does not have (and I wish it did) is the ability to capture a short animated-GIF when you play-forward a time-lapse. “The primary developer, Kevin Gill, deserves the major credit for this new tool.” – Dr. Alan B. Chamberlin/JPL Kevin: Good Job! I had to stop myself from playing with the new tool several times as … Continue reading →

Asteroid Day 2017

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It’s June, Asteroid Day approaches! Asteroid Day is a global coalition of scientists, astronauts, physicists, artists, musicians and concerned citizens that have come together to focus the world’s attention on the nature of asteroids, and the solutions that could protect all life on Earth from future asteroid impacts, and inspire the next generation. Since the summer of 2015, worldwide Asteroid Day events have been held on June 30th, the date of the historic Tunguska Impact Event of 1908. The founders of Asteroid Day drafted the 100X Declaration. In short: Over the last decade and a half, we’ve discovered a LOT of near-Earth asteroids, and continue to do so. Some of these asteroids can potentially impact the Earth. Some of these asteroids are large enough that an impact would be “a bad thing.” We need to accelerate the discovery and tracking of Near-Earth Asteroids to 100,000 per year within the next ten years. We need to get government, private and philanthropic organizations … Continue reading →

Newly Named Asteroids: Apr. 13, 2017, Part 1

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This entry is part of 4 in the series New Named Asteroids

The April 2017 IAU Minor Planet Center circular was filled with over 190 newly named asteroids – more than I’ve ever seen before in a MPC circular! And that’s pretty much all that was in the circular! The May 2017 circular was devoid of newly named asteroids. Since there are so many names in the April circular, I’m splitting it up into several posts. In this portion, some notable names include: science fiction author Philip K. Dick, poet and author Maya Angelou, activist Lilly Ledbetter, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli. Several astronomers, scientists and employees at the Lowell Observatory got asteroids named after them. Some notable locations that got named asteroids include: the Benedictine Abbey in Weltenburg, Ojmjakon – the coldest city on earth, and the French city of Angers. (9004) Peekaydee = 1982 UZ2 Discovered 1982 Oct. 22 by G. Aldering at Kitt Peak. Philip Kindred Dick (1928–1982) was an American science fiction author. His short stories and novels explored philosophical, sociological and political themes, often questioning what … Continue reading →