Asteroids | Space Rock Facts & Updates - Sky & Telescope
2017年8月5日 · See a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid From Your Backyard. Get ready for 2014 JO25, the biggest asteroid to fly this close to Earth since 2004. Good news — even a 3-inch telescope will show it! Update: See below for a radar image and animation of 2014 JO25 captured by NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar on April 18, 2017. Every week, a…
Asteroid 3200 Phaethon: Geminid Parent at Its Closest and Brightest!
2017年11月29日 · The orbit of asteroid 3200 Phaethon is highly elongated, much like a comet's. Perhaps it is an extinct comet, or maybe it's a true asteroid that's cracking and shedding rocky bits when closest to the Sun. The 5.1-kilometer-wide Phaethon completes an orbit every 1.4 years. Sky & Telescope diagram
Observe Vesta — and Own a Piece of It, Too - Sky & Telescope
2022年8月24日 · Vesta's crater-pocked landscape bears witness to countless meteoroid and asteroid impacts from the early days of the solar system. The strike that carved the 500-kilometer-wide Rheasilvia Crater in Vesta's south polar region (bottom) removed about 1% of its volume and left a blunt central peak 23 kilometers high.
Tiny Asteroid 2023 BU to Miss Earth - Sky & Telescope
2023年1月26日 · Earth's more persuasive gravitational pull will rework the asteroid's orbit like a child shaping Play-Doh. Before its encounter, 2023 BU's circuit was roughly circular and took 359 days to complete. After the flyby, the asteroid’s orbit be more elongated, with an aphelion roughly halfway to Mars, and its orbital period will lengthen to 425 days.
Hera Mission Launches to Witness Asteroid-Crash Aftermath
2024年10月7日 · An artist's conception of the Hera mission, including two CubeSats, at the asteroid Dimorphos ESA/Science Office. Now, Hera will head to asteroid 65803 Didymos and its tiny moon Dimorphos. On its way there, the spacecraft will fly by Mars in March 2025, using the opportunity to test its instruments out on the tiny Martian moon Deimos.
The Comet-Asteroid Chiron Has Rings — And They're Changing
2023年12月6日 · Half Asteroid, Half Comet. Chiron has long been known to be an oddball. It is one of the few small solar system bodies with a double personality. Originally classified as an asteroid (2060 Chiron), it also shows behavior more akin to a comet.
Watch an Asteroid Race Across the Sky - Sky & Telescope
2022年1月14日 · The asteroid circles the Sun every 1.6 years in an eccentric orbit with a distance that varies from 0.9 a.u. at perihelion to 1.8 a.u. at aphelion. Astronomers place it in the potentially hazardous (PHA) category — a status it shares with about 2,000 other known asteroids — because it's larger than 140 meters (460 feet) across and passes ...
Amateur Astronomer Finds Kilometer-size Asteroid - Sky
2020年9月11日 · Near-Earth asteroids have been in the news a lot recently: On August 15th, asteroid 2020 QG passed just 2,950 km from Earth's surface, the closest a passing asteroid has come. Another asteroid, 2011 ES 4 passed 1.48 million km from Earth on September 2nd and was recovered by the PanSTARRS survey, allowing astronomer Gianluca Masi to track the ...
If asteroid 99942 Apophis ever strikes Earth, how big would the …
2006年7月24日 · On Friday the 13th in April 2029, a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid named Apophis will pass close enough to Earth (within 20,000 miles) to briefly appear as a 3rd-magnitude star in the night sky. Dan Durda. Apophis (formerly 2004 MN 4) ranks at …
Why Do We Call Them "Asteroids"? - Sky & Telescope
2013年10月25日 · The term "asteroid" co-existed for many years, but it was only c.1855, with the explosion of minor planet discoveries, that the idea of listing these small worlds as "principal planets" was finally abandoned. Besides, the parades parties in Paris after each new "planet" discovery were starting to be weekly events....