Asteroids

There is heaps of exciting stuff happening in the stars above us that make astronomy so much fun. what is true is the universe is a continually changing, moving, a couple of would tell “living” thing for the reason that you just never know what you are going to see on any given night of stargazing.

But of the lots celestial phenomenons, there is possibly none as exciting as that time you see your first asteroid on the move in the heavens. To call asteroids the “rock stars” of astronomy is simultaneously a bad joke but an exact depiction of how astronomy fans view them. Unlike suns, planets and moons, asteroids are on the move, ever changing and, if they appear in the night sky, exciting and everchanging.

Like rock celebrities, asteroids have been given their fair share of urban myth and lore. lots have attributed the extinction of the dinosaurs to the affect of a big asteroid on the earth. This argument has a couple of credibility and, if it is true, it evokes a couple of pretty startling pics and foreboding fears in the ongoing reining species on earth, the human race.

The fact that asteroids are quick moving space debris only produces their movement and task more attractive and exciting. Unlike a moon, planet or megastar, the odds that an asteroid could hit the earth are definitely reasonable and if truth be told, there are lots documented situations of little asteroids making it by ways of our atmosphere and leaving a couple of pretty impressive craters in the earth’s surface.

Popular culture has fortunately embraced the idea of an asteroid affect. The idea has spawned lots a science fiction story adding the idea that alien life forms may ride asteroids to our world and take off a “war of the worlds” circumstance. But by far, the most talked about concept that has captured the imagination and the fears of science fiction fans and the common public is of another asteroid hitting the earth that could wipe out life as allegedly occurred to the dinosaurs. if truth be told, the movie “Armageddon” was based on this idea and the concept that someway mankind could avert that catastrophe with technology.

But possibly the best approach to calm our fears and substitute science fiction with science is with understanding and know-how. what is true is, there has been heaps of study of asteroid task and the serious scientific community has obtained significant know-how of these awesome celestial bodies. a couple of probes to asteroids have been conducted which have given us a wealth of information about their composition and how we might predict their pattern.

We now know that the majority of asteroids we get to witness come from an asteroid belt that exists between Mars and Jupiter. It is from this community of asteroids that lots of the notable asteroids emerged. Scientists have obtained significant know-how about the composition of asteroids and separated them into classes this includes class S which comes of the component of the belt that is closest to Mars, classes C, D and V which are classified by composition and a class called “Centaurs” whose flight routines take them closer to Jupiter and Uranus.

Some of the probes NASA has conducted on near flying asteroids have performed a couple of pretty awesome studies of these eccentric celestial bodies. In 1994 the Galileo probe got within 1000 miles of the asteroid Ida and found out that Ida actually had its own moon.

Other probes have fired impactors into asteroids and even landed on an asteroid to generate some awesome scientific data for us. There is much to learn about asteroids in our love of astronomy and that know-how only produces our enjoyment of seeing them in the cosmos even more exciting.