Asteroids – Page 4 – Astronomy Now

How comets break up and make up

2 June 2016 Astronomy Now

For some comets, breaking up is not that hard to do. A new study indicates that the bodies of some periodic comets — objects that orbit the Sun in less than 200 years — may regularly split in two, then reunite down the road. This may be a repeating process fundamental to comet evolution.

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.

2007 OR10: the largest unnamed world in the solar system

12 May 2016 Astronomy Now

By combining data from two space observatories, astronomers have revealed something surprising: a 955-mile-wide dwarf planet named 2007 OR₁₀ is significantly larger than previously thought. Although its 547-year-long elliptical orbit brings it nearly as close to the Sun as Neptune, 2007 OR₁₀ is currently twice as far from the Sun as Pluto.

Solving the mystery of how Mars’ moon Phobos formed

1 March 2016 Astronomy Now

In late November and early December 2015, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission made a series of close approaches to the Martian moon Phobos. Among the data returned were spectral images of Phobos in the ultraviolet. The images will allow MAVEN scientists to better assess the composition of this enigmatic object, whose origin is unknown.

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.

Early Moon’s far-side crust shattered by barrage of small asteroids

11 September 2015 Astronomy Now

Scientists at MIT and elsewhere have identified regions on the far side of the Moon, called the lunar highlands, that may have been so heavily pelted by small asteroids during a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment 4 billion years ago that the impacts completely shattered the upper crust, leaving these regions essentially as fractured and porous as they could be.

Exo-asteroid debris shows how water reached Earth

7 May 2015 Astronomy Now

New research strongly suggests that water delivery via asteroids or comets is likely taking place in many other planetary systems, adding further support to the possibility water can be delivered to Earth-like planets via such bodies to create a suitable environment for the formation of life.

Earth was grown from millimetre-sized stones

18 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers can now explain how asteroids are formed. According to a new study led by Lund University in Sweden, our own planet also has its origins in the same process — a cosmic ocean of millimetre-sized particles that once orbited the young Sun.

Diverse destinations considered for new interplanetary probe

12 April 2015 Stephen Clark

Science teams from across the United States have submitted 28 proposals for missions to explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, touch the asteroid-like satellites orbiting Mars, visit unseen worlds and hunt for objects that could strike Earth one day.

BBC Stargazing Live helped amateur astronomers find supernovae

3 April 2015 Astronomy Now

More than 40,000 amateur astronomers working on a supernova hunt run by the Zooniverse team based at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with BBC Stargazing Live, found five supernovae and catalogued two million unidentified heavenly bodies found by the SkyMapper telescope in Australia.