STAR GAZING CLUB NEWSLETTER !

AUGUST 2011

STELLASPECTA
Asteroids
(Greek, Star Like)
From the Editors
Fo r t h e n e w r e a d e r s , Stellaspecta is the monthl y newsletter from the Star Gazing Club. It aims at being able to promulgate astronomy and all of its associated topics. St e l l a s p e c t a b e g i n s i t s journey this year with a theme Asteroids . T h e f o l l o w i n g months will see us publish theme-based issues which shall cover a wide variety of topics. Each of these themes will be carefully chosen, researched upon, made relevant and presented to you. The Ste#aspecta team shall always endeavor to make your space-expedition extensive yet eortless, edifying yet exciting, eclectic yet explicit. Asteroid Ida, 31.5km wide, along with its satellite, Dactyl (1.4km wide) Asteroids are metallic, rocky bodies without atmospheres that orbit the Sun, but are too small to be classied as planets. Known as "minor planets," tens of thousands of asteroids congregate in the socalled main asteroid belt: a vast, doughnut - shaped ring located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter from approximately 2 to 4 AU (300 to 600 million km). As always, may the stars guide you.

that fall to the surface of Earth. - Mihir Rajnikant Bhagat, Asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth are called Greeshma Ramakrishna meteoroids. When a meteoroid strikes our atmosphere at high velocity, friction causes this chunk of space matter to incinerate in a streak of light known as a meteor. If the meteoroid does not burn up completely, what's left strikes E a r t h's s u r f a c e a n d c a l l e d a Asteroids are thought to be meteorite. primordial material prevented by The distinction between Ju p i te r 's s t r o n g g r a v i t y f r o m asteroids and comets is, quite accreting into a planet-sized body literally, fuzzy. Comets tend to have when the solar system was born 4.5 more chemical compounds that billion years ago. It is estimated vaporize when heated, such as that the total mass of all asteroids water, and more elliptical ( egg would comprise a body about 1,500 shaped) orbits than asteroids do. km in diameter -- less than half the And when obser ved through a size of the Moon. telescope, comets appear fuzzier. As Much of our understanding an accepted denition, comets are Artists impression of the Asteroid Belt a b o u t a s t e r o i d s c o m e s f r o m asteroids whose orbits extend with Jupiter in the background. examining pieces of space debris beyond the solar system.

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STAR GAZING CLUB NEWSLETTER !

AUGUST 2011

ROGUE REMNANTS
Though too small to earn the distinction of planet, asteroids and comets strike huge fear in the human mind. And for good reason: at some point in the future, one of the chunky rocks or icy mud balls will slam into Earth and alter the course of history. Such an impact 65 mya is widely believed to have killed o the dinosaurs. One of the most well - known and intriguing theories suggested for dinosaur extinction is Th e Asteroid Theory. It is suggested that a huge asteroid or comet, perhaps miles in diameter, hit the Earth ending the existence of almost 50% of the earths species. A crater, now worn down and partly under the ocean, was found along the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula. The Yucatan crater or the Chicxulub Crater, as it is called today was formed by an impact of an asteroid that was roughly 10 km in diameter that hit with 100 million megatons of force. That is equivalent to all of the nuclear bombs in existence today. Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, have even been able to trace the path of that asteroid back into space. According to their calculations 160 million years ago a collision between a 100-mile-wide asteroid, named Baptistina, and a smaller unnamed asteroid out beyond the orbit of Mars, shattered the larger object and sent pieces of it into the inner solar system. Ninety-ve million years

The Chicxulub Crater along the Mexican Yuacatan Peninsula created by a 10 km wide asteroid, probably wiping of Dinosaurs 65 mya. after that, these pieces encountered earth - ending the dinosaurs! Though alternate theories for the sudden climatic changes have been proposed, the signicance of the Yucatan crater cannot be ignored. It changed the face of evolution in one mighty stroke. Can you imagine what would happen if something like that occurred today?

Just in case: HOW TO DEFLECT A ROGUE ASTEROID?

Scientists have come up with a number of dierent ways of deecting an incoming asteroid from its path, some more realistic than others. Here are a few of the best ideas: 1. Nuclear blast: A large nuclear explosion on an asteroid might be enough to deect an asteroid but has signicant political and ethical problems. And what if we just blew it into smaller pieces? 2. Using mirrors: A eet of spacecraft carrying light-reecting mirrors might be able to vaporize the asteroid's surface using the Sun's rays. The gases from its surface would create a tiny amount of thrust - enough to divert it 3. Gravity tractor: Crashing a spacecraft int the asteroid's surface would certainly be the cheapest option. The ship's own tiny gravity would then help move the asteroid's path. But this option would take a long time to make a dierence
Earth has been attacked by big, rogue asteroids on nearly 20 occasions in the last 50 years. But, both Earth and mankind, have been saved every single time, courtesy - our Hollywood directors! In the real world, however, the probability of getting hit (or even nearly hit) by an asteroid of severe consequences (diameter > 1km) is Once in 500,000 years!

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STAR GAZING CLUB NEWSLETTER !

AUGUST 2011

DAWN - THE MISSION TO AN ASTEROID

There are many mysteries surrounding our Solar System. For instance, what were the conditions when masses were combining to form bodies; Or why only the planets inside the asteroid belt have rocky bodies; Or what controls the formation and evolution of protoplanets. To answer such questions, NASA, in 2001, undertook the Dawn project. It is designed to yield a signicant increase in the understanding of the conditions and processes acting at the solar systems earliest epoch. It does so by examining the geophysical properties of two complementary bodies, Ceres and Vesta, the largest asteroids. The accretion of bodies during the earliest stages of the solar system led to the growth of planets. Jupiters gravity is believed to have interfered with this process, thus depriving the region between it and Mars of a single planet and leaving instead a belt of protoplanets. Collisions during the subsequent 4.5 billion years have reduced the size and increased the number of the asteroids. Vesta and Ceres, however, have survived largely intact through that collisional history. They preserve retrievable records of the physical and chemical conditions during the solar systems early times. Vesta and Ceres, orbiting the Sun at a distance of more than 300 million km, could not be more dierent: While Vesta once had a hot, molten interior that produced lava ows, Ceres has always been a cold body, under whose surface possibly frozen water can be found. But despite these severe dierences, both asteroids are only a 60 million km apart (Avg. Earth- Mars distance is 78 million km). They form a bridge from the rocky bodies of the inner solar system to the icy bodies of the outer solar system. The profound dierences in geology between these two protoplanets that formed and evolved so close to each other makes Dawns comparison compelling. Dawn is powered by solar electric ion propulsion, the worlds most advanced and ecient space propulsion technology. It takes advantage of magnetism and electricity to push the spacecraft through space. Unlike conventional rockets, which use high-energy chemical reactions to force a stream of hot gas out of the engine, ion rockets employ electric elds to accelerate charged particles of fuel (in this case, xenon gas) out of the back of the spacecraft. Ion engines give a pretty feeble kick. Dawn produces 92 millinewtons of thrust (about the same amount of force required to hold a notebook page). The exhaust velocity, though, is enormousmore than ten times that of a chemical rocketand this makes ion propulsion extremely ecient. It also allows for the engine to re-ignite in mid-space, and leave Vestas orbit after a year, and move towards Ceres.

Artists impression of Dawn using ion-propulsion. Ion propulsion system is the most advanced and efcient technology for propulsion. It can travel for 2100 days with only 425 kgs of Xenon propellant. Vesta is shown in the background.

Dawn mission schedule: 2007, Sept 27th: Launch 2009, Feb: Mars Flyby 2011, July: Arrival at Vesta

2012, May: Leave Vesta 2015, Feb: Arrival at Ceres 2015, July: Leave from Ceres

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STAR GAZING CLUB NEWSLETTER !

AUGUST 2011

HOW DO WE FIND/DISCOVER ASTEROIDS?

Four gigantic telescopes around the world tirelessly stare at the sky, taking three images for every region of the sky. The International Asteroid Search Campaign (IASC) has made a public outreach program to use these images to discover asteroids. It is a collaboration of universities and institutions spread over 11 countries, and Star Gazing Club, NITK is a part of it. Over this summer, ve members of the Star Gazing Club analyzed a large number of image sets and observed asteroids. An open source software called Astrometrica proved to be very useful in the the search for asteroids. It has inbuilt image processing tools such as Tracking, Stacking, and Blinking. It also has a feature of Known object overlay with a huge database of upto-date asteroid and star locations. The software makes use of the fact that asteroids apparently move less, as they are closer than stars. Stack aligns the stars and thus, asteroids look long and blurred. Track aligns moving objects thus, making them sharp and bright. And then the motion of asteroids can be distinctly seen through the Blinking Utility. Once an object is identied as a probable asteroid, it is sent over the internet, to be checked and veried by professional astronomers. If the tracked object doesnt show up in any existing databases, then a new asteroid is discovered! Even though a new asteroid wasnt discovered during the search this summer, it was an incredible learning experience for SGC members, who got to handle real data and work along with professionals. SGC looks forward to participate in it again, sometime soon.

End Note: WE ARE THE ALIENS!

Any Dan Brown fan will be familiar with this theory: Life was planted on earth &om outer space. After the futile attempt to prove this theory in Deception Point, NASA scientists may have found something more promising. Earth, when it formed billions of years ago was dry, scientists say. So where did the water come from? One possible theory is from crashing comets (that are essentially icy snowballs). But comets come from the outer reaches of the solar system tend to have more heavy hydrogen than the water in our oceans. Recently, scientists found lots of life-essential water frozen as ice in an unexpected place in our solar system: asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. These asteroids might have the right heavy hydrogen ratio to match what's on Earth. Furthermore, scientists didn't just nd ice; they found hydrogen and oxygen molecules locked in clay, and also organic molecules, similar to what may have started life on Earth. These asteroids hold clues not only to our past and how the solar system and water on Earth may have originated but also have clues about our future with exploration of near- Earth asteroids and may even be a possible intermediate base for deep-space ventures. In conclusion we can say if this theory is proven, the search for extraterrestrial lives ends in our own backyard. We are the aliens!

THE LIGHTER SIDE:

SGC Astro-Quiz, 16th August, Tuesday, 6 pm at the MSH. Contact: Cambodge, 9008419372 ! PAGE 4