What are asteroids made of? While composed of metals, rocks, ices, and also many elements that are difficult to find and retrieve here on Earth — hence the growing interest in asteroid-mining missions — these drifting denizens of the Solar System have many different possible ways of forming. Some may be dense hunks of rock…
Category: Comets and Asteroids
A Ceres of Surprises: the Largest Asteroid is a Water World
By now you must know about the jets of ice particles blasting out of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and maybe have even heard about the recent discovery of water vapor issuing forth from Jupiter’s frozen moon Europa. But now we know of another spray-happy world out there: Ceres, which at 591 miles across is our solar…
Wake Up, Rosetta!
It’s being called “the most important alarm clock in the solar system” — tomorrow, Monday January 20, at 10:00 GMT (which is 5:00 a.m. for U.S. East Coasters like me) the wake-up call will ring for ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, bringing it out of hibernation after over two and a half years in preparation of its…
Interview With the Meteorite Man
Have you ever seen a meteor streak across the night sky? How about a very bright fireball (aka bolide), one that seemed to disintegrate in front of your eyes or leave a trail of vapor that hung in the air for a few moments? These “shooting stars” are actually tiny bits of rock and dust…
The Brightest Lights: 12 Awesome Space Stories of 2013
What a year for space exploration! With 2013 coming to a close I thought I would look back on some of the biggest news in space that I’ve featured here on Lights in the Dark. Rather than a “top ten” list, as is common with these year-end reviews, I’m going to do more of a…
So… What’s Up With ISON?
Yesterday sure was interesting. As the astronomical world, from scientists to journalists to enthusiasts alike, watched online in near real time as ISON came within its closest pass of the Sun — in literally ever — the comet, having spent the previous several hours brightening steadily, suddenly went dim as it traveled deep into the…
Questions About ISON? Here Are Some Answers:
Unless you’ve been living in the Oort Cloud you’ve probably heard about the current travels of comet C/2012 S1 (aka ISON) through the inner solar system. Although this soon-to-be “sungrazing” comet was first spotted by astronomers Vitali Nevski (from Belarus) and Artyom Novichonok (Russia) on Sept. 21, 2012, it’s actually been on its way toward the…
The Other Side of ISON: Here’s the Comet as Seen from Mercury
While many skywatchers, scientists, and astronomy enthusiasts around the world wait to see if comet ISON survives its perihelion — that is, its closest pass by the Sun — on Nov. 28, the MESSENGER spacecraft has captured an image of the incoming comet from its position in orbit around Mercury! The image above, shared today…
Astronomers Spot an Asteroid Sporting Six Comet-Like Tails
If you thought tails were just for comets and cats, this asteroid is about to prove you wrong. On August 27 astronomers spotted an unusually fuzzy looking object in survey images taken with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii. The multiple tails were discovered in Hubble images taken on September 10, 2013. When Hubble returned to…
NASA’s Surprising Discoveries About Three Near-Earth Asteroids
Every few days or so I like to check the “Close Approaches” page of JPL’s Near-Earth Object Program, just to see what sorts of cosmic objects are whizzing by our planet; how big they are, when they’ll come, and how far they’ll (hopefully!) miss us by. Most of them are relatively small asteroids several dozen…
Comet ISON is Keeping It Together
Despite a few previous claims of breaking up or fizzling out (which, technically, was a misquote anyway — it was ‘fizzing’ not ‘fizzling’) it appears that the incoming comet ISON is holding together just fine… although how well it does as it swings closely around the Sun in November has yet to be seen. While…
Meet the Asteroid That Could Smash Into Earth in 2880
There are over 10,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) that have been identified so far, asteroids and comets of varying sizes that approach the Earth’s orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million km). Of the 10,000 discoveries, roughly 10 percent are larger than six-tenths of a mile (one kilometer) in size – large enough to have…
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