Astronomy – Page 4 – astroengine.com

Strangest Kuiper Belt Objects: The Top Five

The Kuiper belt is strange. Most of this strangeness probably comes from the fact that we are only just beginning to uncover this mysterious region of the Solar System. Unlike the Oort Cloud which (possibly) lies beyond 3 × 10¹² km away (over 20,000 AU, or a whopping 0.3 light years), we can actually observe the objects inside the Kuiper belt as, compared to the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper belt is on our interplanetary doorstep.

But that doesn’t mean it’s close. The Kuiper belt exists in a region of space 30–55 AU from the Sun; this is where Pluto lives (as Pluto itself is a “Kuiper belt object”, or KBO). As astronomical techniques become more advanced however, we are able to discover more KBOs in the zoo of icy-rocky bodies that live in this region.

Having just written about an oddball pair of “highly split” KBOs, I feel compelled to list my top five favourite KBOs. Here are my favourites, as some are really funny-lookin’ and others have some serious personal issues…
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Got It! Aftermath of Asteroid 2008 TC3 Impact Spotted

The long-lasting persistent train of the 2008 TC3 re-entry on October 7th (NASA)

At long last, we have visual evidence of the 2008 TC3 impact over the remote Sudanese skies. Admittedly, it’s not a video of the dazzling fireball ploughing though the upper atmosphere, before detonating with the energy of a small nuclear weapon, but it is a great picture of the smoky remnant after the explosion.

A noctilucent cloud after the launch of a Delta rocket (Flickr)

The meteorite train seen in the image above has been sheared and twisted by high altitude winds, leaving the snake-like pattern suspended in the air. The tenuous debris reflects the dawn sunlight, in a not-so-dissimilar way to the noctilucent cloud produced after a rocket launch (pictured left).

For more on today’s uncovering of the October 7th image (above), check out my Universe Today article. For more information on the first ever predicted asteroid impact, check out my collection of articles on Astroengine.com (tag: “2008 TC3”).

Pinhole Camera Solargraphy

The Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, a single 6-month exposure solargraph (© Justin Quinnell)

Armed with the most basic photography device and plenty of time, Justin Quinnell has captured some of the most unique and entrancing views of the Sun over my hometown of Bristol. When I first saw this image, the iconic Clifton Suspension Bridge instantly jumped out at me. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but after getting engrossed in Justin’s website all about pinhole photography, I soon realised this was a six-month exposure, capturing the Sun’s motion from winter solstice (December 21st, 2007) to summer solstice (June 19th, 2008)…
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Meet Antipholus and Antipholus, a Very Odd Kuiper Belt Couple

2001 QW322 is a highly split Kuiper Belt pair, orbiting eachother at a distance of 125,000 km

The Kuiper Belt is an eerie, mysterious and cold region of the Solar System. In it, there are billions of small pieces of rocks with lots of fancy names. As a general designation, all objects in the Kuiper belt are called “Kuiper-belt objects” (KBO’s for short). As the Kuiper belt is located in a region just beyond Neptune, they may also be known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNO’s). Inside the Kuiper belt, we have Pluto-like objects known as “Plutoids”, classical KBO’s called “Cubewanos” (the largest being the recently discovered Makemake) and a whole host of other objects such as icy objects soon to become the next generation of periodic comets.

We are only scraping the surface, finding only a small portion of KBOs. We know of a thousand, but astronomers believe there may be as many as 70,000 measuring over 100km in diameter, plus countless other smaller objects.

Therefore, it is not very surprising that some rather strange KBOs exist, and possibly the oddest one has just been observed. From the same team that discovered KBO 2008 KV42 — a piece of rock orbiting the wrong way in a one-way Solar System — a binary Kuiper belt object has been found with a huge orbit…
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Rare Meteor Fireball Captured by Seven Canadian Cameras (Videos)

The slow-moving fireball lights up Canadian skies (SOMN)

A stunning series of videos from seven all-sky cameras in the The University of Western’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN) captured the same fireball generated by a meteor entering the atmosphere pre-dawn on the morning of September 15th. Whilst meteors aren’t uncommon (if you hang around outside for long enough you might see one or two “shooting stars” yourself), this fireball was very bright and had a surprisingly slow velocity. What’s more, astronomers think that the extraterrestrial object came from a typical Earth-crossing orbit, possibly indicating this was another small near-Earth asteroid. In fact, meteorite hunters believe that it may have slowed significantly when passing through the atmosphere, dropping fragments to the ground. A great catch by the Canadian team, let’s get searching!
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Asteroids (1) : Earth (2) – Welcome to the Interplanetary Shooting Gallery

Rocks are being thrown at us, but we haven’t noticed

Artist impression of an asteroid impact - don't worry, this doesn't happen very often... (Getty Images)

On October 7th, a small asteroid called 2008 TC3 exploded in the skies above Sudan. On October 9th, a metre-wide asteroid named 2008 TS26 buzzed Earth’s atmosphere by only 7000 km. Then on the 21st (Tuesday) a slightly bigger piece of rock called 2008 US missed us by 25,000 km. It sounds like it’s getting dangerous out there, especially when considering the last recorded object (2004 FU162) to come screaming past the Earth (at 6500 km) happened in 2004.

But don’t be concerned. Small asteroids are being thrown at us all the time; asteroid hunters are just getting better at spotting them…
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First Image of Asteroid TC3 Impact Fireball… From Space

2008 TC3 generates a huge fireball according to weather satellite Meteosat 8 (Zdenek Charvat, Czech Hydrometeorological Institute)

There may not be any ground-based imagery of the 1.1-2.1 kT fireball after asteroid 2008 TC3 hit the Earth’s upper atmosphere above Sudan, but we now have the first satellite observation of the impact. 2008 TC3 (a.k.a. “Brian” as I lovingly named it in my previous post) hit at 02:43am (UTC) yesterday morning, three minutes before the predicted re-entry. This is a huge moment for asteroid hunters: 2008 TC3 is the first ever asteroid to be discovered and accurately forecast to hit our planet.

The above image was taken by the weather satellite Meteosat 8, as Jiri Borovicka of the Czech Academy of Sciences explains: “The explosion was visible in all 12 of the satellite’s spectral channels, covering wavelengths from 0.5 to 14 microns,” he said. “The satellite takes pictures every five minutes; the fireball appeared at 0245 UTC and had faded away by 0250 UTC.”

It’s great to finally see the explosion of the first ever predicted asteroid impact. I think we all feel a little safer now…

Source: Space Weather

Historic Asteroid 2008 TC3 Hits Earth as Predicted

Predicted region of atmospheric impact according to infrasound observations (Peter Brown, University of Western Ontario)

2008 TC3 wasn’t a particularly interesting asteroid. It wasn’t very big (only 1-5 metres wide) and it didn’t really stand out as being special (if it was special, we didn’t have any time to realise it anyway). If 2008 TC3 was in a crowd of other asteroids you wouldn’t have picked it out. In fact, it was that “normal” that it wasn’t named, it just kept its original asteroid designation number. 2008 TC3 was an ordinary piece of space rock in an extraordinary situation.

This was the first ever asteroid that astronomers were able to track and predict (with high precision) where and when it was going to hit Earth. Sure enough, astronomers using the Mt. Lemmon telescope in Arizona as part of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey for near-Earth objects discovered 2008 TC3 before it hit Earth, enabling us to be forewarned a whole six hours before impact. If the object was any larger, astronomers will have (for the first time) been able to warn people on the surface, thus saving lives.

In fact, asteroid 2008 TC3 is so special that I’m going to give it an unofficial name: Asteroid Brian*.
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Small Asteroid 2008 TC3 Will Hit Earth Tonight

Artist impression of a meteorite entering the Earth's atmosphere (©Leonard Wikberg III)

A newly discovered asteroid called 2008 TC3 will (with a 99.8-100% probability) hit the atmosphere over northern Sudan at 2:46 UTC (Oct 7th). The piece of rock will not threaten people or structures on the surface, it is likely to burn up during re-entry as a magnificent “air burst.” Estimates suggest that as 2008 TC3 burns up, it will detonate with an energy of a kiloton of TNT.

2008 TC3 is between 1-5 meters in diameter, so it’s not a threat by any means, but it should create a spectacular display. Usually the bright meteors we observe are generated by debris no bigger than a grain of sand, so this will be a huge astronomical event in comparison. The giant meteor will be visible from eastern Africa travelling very quickly from north-east to south-west and it is expected to create a very long trail as it will enter the atmosphere at a very shallow angle.
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Nancy Writes for Wired: “Giants of Earth and Space”

Gran Telescopio Canarias located on La Palma, Spain - one of the giant observatories looking at the stars (GTC)

My Universe Today colleague and superb science writer Nancy Atkinson has written her first article for Wired.com! This is obviously a huge step as her writing has instantly accessed potentially millions of readers. So, CONGRATULATIONS NANCY!

Nancy was approached by Wired to put together an article about some of the biggest and boldest observatories on Earth. Her writing is accompanied by some stunning photography of these giant structures that include the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) on Mount Fowlkes, Texas (sporting 91 separate one-meter hexagonal mirrors); the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano (with two 10-meter mirrors composed of 36 hexagonal segments); and my personal favourite, the Very Large Telescope Interferometer on the Andes mountaintop of Cerro Paranal, Chile (four 8.2-meter diameter telescopes working in tandem). There is a huge amount of information in Nancy’s excellent article, making it more than worthy of being included in this hugely popular science & technology magazine website.

Be sure to check out “Giants of Earth and Space,” by Nancy Atkinson over at Wired.com.