You might think of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars as a assortment of space junk floating randomly in space. There are millions of asteroids of which more than 100,000 have been measured and mapped by astronomers. But analysis of those asteroids has shown that there are groups of asteroids that are related to one another and are referred to family members
A Chinese spacecraft has been only the fourth to fly past an asteroid and capture close-up images. Here are a series of images of the 4 km long asteroid Toutatis which is considered a NEA (Near Earth Asteroid) though it won't make another pass near the earth for another 50 years. This is... Continue Reading →
There are millions of asteroids orbiting the solar system most of which are found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Studies of these asteroids, as part of an effort to assess the threats to earth, have allowed us to track and paths, sizes and rotational frequencies of over 1000 asteroids.
Sometimes you run across an article so ridiculous you can hardly believe you just read it. Such is the case with a chapter of Walter Brown's book "In the Beginning." The whole book has significant problems but while I was delving a bit deeper into the origins of meteorites and asteroids and the appearance of... Continue Reading →
A press release yesterday from NASA (HERE) was picked up by various news outlets because it referenced problems with a prior work that attempted to identify the source of an asteroid that may have killed off the dinosaurs. While the release and the related research paper is interesting in itself I was more interested in... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 