NEOWISE Thermal Data Reveal Surface Properties of Asteroids
Nearly all asteroids are so far away and so small that the astronomical community only knows them as moving points of light. The rare exceptions…
Asteroid
Astronomers Discover Asteroid Captured from Another Star System
A new study has discovered the first known permanent immigrant to our Solar System. The asteroid, currently nestling in Jupiter’s orbit, is the first known…
Astronomers Discover Exiled Asteroid in Outer Reaches of Solar System
An international team of astronomers has used ESO telescopes to investigate a relic of the primordial Solar System. The team found that the unusual Kuiper…
NEOWISE Asteroid-Hunting Spacecraft Releases Fourth Year of Data
NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission has released its fourth year of survey data. Since the mission was restarted in December 2013,…
A Star Disturbed Solar System Comets and Asteroids 70,000 Years Ago
About 70,000 years ago, when the human species was already on Earth, a small reddish star approached our solar system and gravitationally disturbed comets and…
Asteroid Remnants Can Help Explain How Life on Earth Began
In popular culture, asteroids play the role of apocalyptic threat, get blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs – and offer an extraterrestrial source for mineral…
Two Close-Approaching Asteroids Will Safely Pass Earth This Week
Two small asteroids recently discovered by astronomers at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) near Tucson, Arizona, are safely passing by Earth within one lunar…
Astronomers Prepare for Asteroid 2002 AJ129 Flyby of Earth
Asteroid 2002 AJ129 will make a close approach to Earth on February 4, 2018 at 1:30 p.m. PST (4:30 p.m. EST / 21:30 UTC). At…
Arecibo Radar Views Near-Earth Asteroid 3200 Phaethon
After several months of downtime after Hurricane Maria blew through, the Arecibo Observatory Planetary Radar has returned to normal operation, providing the highest-resolution images to…
SPHERE Instrument Views Asteroids 29 Amphitrite, 324 Bamberga, 2 Pallas, and 89 Julia
These images were taken by ESO’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument, installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory, Chile. These…
New Physical Model Explains the Origin of Water in Our Solar System
Equipped with Newton’s law of universal gravitation (published in Principia 330 years ago) and powerful computational resources (used to apply the law to more than…
VLT Shows First Interstellar Asteroid ‘Oumuamua is Like Nothing Seen Before
Astronomers reveal that asteroid ‘Oumuamua was traveling through interstellar space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. For the first…
Asteroid Chicxulub Impactor Changed the History of Life on Earth
An asteroid, also known as the Chicxulub Impactor, hit Earth some 66 million years ago, causing a crater 180 km wide. The impact of the…
International Team of Astronomers Completes First Asteroid Tracking Exercise
An international team of astronomers successfully completed the first global exercise using a real asteroid to test global response capabilities. Planning for the so-called “TC4…
Hubble Telescope Spots Asteroids Photobombing Distant Galaxies
Like rude relatives who jump in front of your vacation snapshots of landscapes, some of our solar system’s asteroids have photobombed deep images of the…
A Small Object (A/2017 U1) from Deep Space Enters Our Solar System
Astronomers reveal that a small, recently discovered asteroid — or perhaps a comet — has entered our solar system from somewhere else in our galaxy….
Asteroid 2012 TC4 Will Safely Pass By Earth, Just Above Communications Satellites
On October 12, asteroid 2012 TC4 will safely pass by Earth at a distance of approximately 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers). Passing by the Earth at…
Large Near-Earth Asteroid Florence to Pass Earth on September 1
The large near-Earth asteroid named Florence will safely pass by Earth on September 1, 2017, at a distance of about 4.4 million miles (7.0 million…