asteroids

All posts tagged asteroids

Observation of an occultation. From https://science.unistellar.com/asteroid-occultations/.

The advent of increasingly sophisticated, commercial-grade astronomical hardware and software is democratizing science in a profound way. Citizen scientists have helped find planets in other solar systems, classify galaxies, and spot supernovae. Closer to home, citizen scientists are helping unlock the mysteries of our own solar system through the science of occultations.

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Evading the celestial police, one Italian monk ushered in the golden age of asteroidal discovery. Once thought the remnants of a long-lost planet, asteroids are now known to have been the ingredients in the cosmic confectionaries we call planets. Though their shadows have revealed a variety of asteroids, scientists will soon get their hands on fragments of these faraway finds.

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From a sandy spit in Florida, an ear-shattering rumble followed by a sky-splitting streak of light heralded the launch of NASA’s Lucy mission, a twelve-year effort to explore sky-borne fossils. The mission began its journey to visit seven asteroids, with orbits stretching from Mars to Jupiter.

Like artifacts from someone’s childhood, Lucy’s targets will help unravel the rich and complex story of the Solar System’s earliest days. But these targets promise an even deeper glimpse than before because of exactly where they orbit. These asteroids have been trapped for billions of years in a spiderweb woven from gravity, the subtle strands of which were teased apart in 1770s Prussia by the Franco-Italian heir to Newton’s legacy.

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