Search Results for “asteroids”

New ‘test-bed’ telescope joins hunt for threatening asteroids

27 April 2021 Astronomy Now

A European Space Agency “test-bed” telescope has been installed at ESO’s La Silla Observatory to hunt for threatening asteroids and test advanced technology.

Citizen scientists track down asteroids in Hubble photos

14 October 2019 Astronomy Now

Citizen scientists spot thousands of asteroid trails in archived photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, helping astronomers pin down orbits

Using pulsars to precisely weigh planets and asteroids

26 October 2018 Astronomy Now

Ultra-precise signals from millisecond pulsars are being used to help astronomers more accurately measure the masses of bodies in Earth’s solar system, a technique that is remarkably sensitive to small changes.

The search for uncharted asteroids and comets continues

24 April 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s NEOWISE spacecraft has been hard at work the past four years, charting asteroids and comets across the solar system, helping astronomers identify near-Earth objects as well as more distant asteroids and comets.

Hubble sees nearby asteroids photobombing distant galaxies

3 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Like rude relatives who jump in front your vacation snapshots of landscapes, some of our solar system’s asteroids have photobombed deep images of the universe taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

A unique project to track two asteroids for Asteroid Day 2016

29 June 2016 Astronomy Now

Las Cumbres Observatory have partnered with Asteroid Day 2016 and Universe Awareness to create a website which allows you to use a global network of robotic telescopes to take pictures of two asteroids — 2002 KL6 and 2010 NY65 — currently passing close to Earth. On the website you can join the international campaign to study and raise awareness about asteroids.

Meteorites delivered water ice to asteroids in early solar system

28 June 2016 Astronomy Now

Planetary scientists have discovered pieces of opal in a meteorite found in Antarctica, a result that demonstrates that meteorites delivered water ice to asteroids early in the history of the solar system. Opal, familiar on Earth as a precious stone used in jewellery, is made up of silica (the major component of sand) with up to 30 percent water in its structure.

Asteroids identified as source of Moon’s water

1 June 2016 Astronomy Now

According to a new international study, most (>80 percent) of the water inside the Moon was delivered by asteroids similar to carbonaceous chondritic meteorites during the early lunar evolution, approximately 4.5—4.3 billion years ago. A similar delivery of water to the Earth would have been occurring within this same interval of time.

Mystery of disappearing asteroids solved

18 February 2016 Astronomy Now

Ever since it was realised that asteroid and comet impacts are a real and present danger to the survival of life on Earth, it was thought that most of those objects end their existence by plunging into the Sun. But a new study finds instead that most of those objects are destroyed in a drawn out, long hot fizzle, much farther from the Sun than previously thought.

Asteroids found to be the Moon’s main ‘water supply’

3 October 2015 Astronomy Now

Water reserves found on the Moon are the result of asteroids acting as “delivery vehicles” and not of falling comets as was previously thought. Using computer simulation, scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the RAS Geosphere Dynamics Institute have discovered that a large asteroid can deliver more water to the lunar surface than the cumulative fall of comets over a billion year period.