After three and a half years of thrusting silently through the void, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is on the threshold of a new world. It’s deep in the asteroid belt, less than 4 months from giant asteroid Vesta.
“We’re closing in,” says Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission manager. “And I’m getting more excited every day!”
Dawn will enter orbit … Read the rest of this article
On March 29, 1807, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers spotted Vesta as a pinprick of light in the sky. Two hundred and four years later, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft prepares to begin orbiting this intriguing world, scientists now know how special this world is, even if there has been some debate on how to classify it.
Many astronomers call Vesta … Read the rest of this article
Asteroid 2003 UV11 will fly past Earth on Oct. 29th and 30th (2010) at a distance of only 1.2 million miles. Its minimum (closest) approach to Earth happens at 02:24:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on October 30th.
Experienced amateur astronomers should have little trouble photographing the 600-meter wide space rock as it glides through the constellation Pegasus on Friday night, … Read the rest of this article
[Update: October 13: Asteroid 2010 TD54 flew within the orbit of the moon on Oct. 11 while astronomers watched to see if the encounter caused any quakes on the space rock. It was flying over Southeast Asia, near Singapore, at the time. Astronomers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston used a remote link with a NASA Infrared … Read the rest of this article
Asteroid Lutetia has been revealed as a battered world of many craters. ESA’s Rosetta mission has returned the first close-up images of the asteroid showing it is most probably a primitive survivor from the violent birth of the Solar System.
The flyby was a spectacular success with Rosetta performing faultlessly. Closest approach took place at 18:10 CEST on July 10th, … Read the rest of this article
A curious object is about to fly past Earth only one-third the distance to the Moon.
Cataloged as a 10m-class asteroid, 2010 AL30 has an orbital period of almost exactly 1 year. This raises the possibility that it might not be a natural object, but rather a piece of some spacecraft from our own planet.
At closest approach on Jan. … Read the rest of this article
May 7, 2007: This week, asteroid 1862 Apollo is flying past Earth.
Closest approach: 11 million kilometers on May 8th at 1500 UT.
Discovered in 1932, Apollo was the first asteroid recognized to cross Earth’s orbit. It measures 1.7 km wide and has a tiny 75 meter wide moon. In the nights ahead, southern hemisphere astronomers with big backyard telescopes … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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