Ice and Stone 2020 Word Search #3
Do your best to find these words that are scattered throughout the 43rd weekly edition of Ice and Stone 2020. Words may be placed horizontally or vertically. Letters in the grid may be used in more than one word, but not all the letters in the grid have to appear in a word. More from Week …
Have you got what it takes to become an astronaut?
Millions of people watched breathlessly as astronauts for the first time successfully travelled to the International Space Station (ISS) in a privately funded spacecraft, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, on May 30. The historic launch, which marks a new chapter in human spaceflight, is likely to lead to renewed interest in spaceflight. …
This Week in History: October 11-17
OCTOBER 11, 1983: The InfraRed Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) spacecraft discovers the “asteroid” now known as (3200) Phaethon. Phaethon had the smallest perihelion distance of any asteroid known at the time and was soon found to be traveling in the same orbit as the Geminid meteors, suggesting it may be their parent object and thus may …
Comet of the Week: The Great Comet of 1811
Perihelion: 1811 September 12.76, q = 1.035 AU Once the orbital calculations for Comet Hale-Bopp C/1995 O1 were made and it appeared that it would be making a “Great Comet” display a year and a half in the future, it was natural for those of us at the time to search for historical analogs. A …
Special Topic: Trojan Asteroids
In any orbital configuration involving two, and only two, objects – for example, Earth and the sun – the orbital motion can be solved directly from Isaac Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation; the mathematical solution is complete and analytical. As soon as additional objects are added to the mix, however, things become much more complex, …
Hubble captures new storm barreling across Jupiter
A spectacular new image of Jupiter was taken last month by NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which celebrated its 30th year of operation during 2020. The image unveils never-before-seen detail, including a newly formed giant white-colored turbulent storm swirling at over 300 mph in the northern latitudes as our solar system’s largest planet was …
This Week in History: October 4-10
OCTOBER 4, 2020: The main-belt asteroid (1679) Nevanlinna will occult the 7th-magnitude star HD 224945 in Pisces. The predicted path of the occultation crosses Newfoundland, part of the Maritime Provinces of Canada, the northeastern through the south-central U.S. (including Houston, Texas), north-central Mexico (including the northern regions of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon), and the southern Pacific …
Comet of the Week: Donati 1858 VI
Perihelion: 1858 September 30.46, q = 0.578 AU Among the many individuals who made important contributions to astronomy during the mid-19th Century was the Italian astronomer Giovanni Donati, who observed from the Observatory of Florence and who was Director of that institution from 1864 until his death (at age 46) in 1873. He made the …
Special Topic: 2008 TC3 and the Almahata Sitta Meteorite
The “Special Topics” presentation three weeks ago discussed actions that we might take should we detect an asteroid that appears will impact Earth. The first and foremost task is the collection of as much data as possible in order to refine the orbit and the likelihood of an actual impact, and if this continues to …
Detection of phosphine in Venus’ clouds is a big deal as it may be a sign of life
On Sept. 14, 2020, a new planet was added to the list of potentially habitable worlds in the Solar System: Venus. Phosphine, a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH₃), commonly produced by organic life forms but otherwise difficult to make on rocky planets, was discovered in the middle layer …
This Week in History: Sept. 27-Oct. 3
SEPTEMBER 27, 1858: A British portrait painter and photographer, William Usherwood, takes a photograph of Comet Donati 1858 VI, the first photograph ever taken of a comet. No copies of Usherwood’s photograph are known to exist. Comet Donati is next week’s “Comet of the Week.” SEPTEMBER 27, 1990: The Hubble Space Telescope observes Comet Levy …
Comet of the Week: The Great Comet of 1882
Perihelion: 1882 September 17.72, q = 0.008 AU What can arguably be considered as one of the brightest and most spectacular comets of the entire 2nd Millennium was a Kreutz sungrazer, one of the most pre-eminent representatives of that class of objects that is the subject of a future “Special Topics” presentation. It was first …
Special Topic: Carbonaceous Chondrites
In an earlier “Special Topics” presentation I described how meteorites are classified based upon their respective compositions. As I indicated in that presentation, the majority of known meteorites are the “stony” meteorites composed primarily of various silicates, and of these, most contain small, roughly spherical particles called “chondrules” that are primarily made up of silicates …
This Week in History: September 20-26
SEPTEMBER 21, 2012: Two amateur astronomers, Vitali Nevski of Belarus and Artyom Novichonok of Russia, discover Comet ISON C/2012 S1 with a telescope of the International Scientific Optical Network located at Kislovodsk, Russia. Comet ISON was expected to become a brilliant object when near the sun and Earth in late 2013 but instead disintegrated as …
Comet of the Week: Delavan 1913f
Perihelion: 1914 October 26.77, q = 1.104 AU After the spectacular appearances of the Daylight Comet of 1910 and of Comet 1P/Halley later that same year – both of these objects having been discussed in previous “Ice and Stone 2020” presentations – the next few years brought some additional bright comets to Earth’s nighttime skies. …
Special Topic: Comet Tails
Of all the phenomena associated with comets, the one that more than any other gives them their beauty and their mystique is their tails. As recounted in a previous “Special Topics” presentation, the first recorded scientific observation of a comet concerned its tail: when observing the bright comet that appeared during the second half of …
Twin spacecraft to study “rubble pile” binary asteroids
The official go-ahead has been given by NASA to a mission to launch a pair of small spacecraft to capture the first-ever closeup look at a mysterious class of solar system objects: binary asteroids. These bodies are pairs of asteroids that orbit around each other in space, much like the Earth and Moon. In a project …
This Week in History: September 13-19
SEPTEMBER 13, 1959: The then-Soviet Union’s Luna 2 spacecraft impacts the lunar surface slightly to the east of the Mare Imbrium. This was the first human spacecraft to reach the moon and the first spacecraft to impact another object in the solar system. SEPTEMBER 13, 1985: The U.S. Defense Department’s P78-1 satellite is deliberately destroyed …
Comet of the Week: 21P/Giacobini-Zinner 1984e
Perihelion: 1985 September 5.21, q = 1.028 AU The last comet discovered in the 19th Century was found on December 20, 1900, by the French astronomer Michel Giacobini from Nice Observatory, the fifth of twelve comets he discovered between 1896 and 1907. The comet was around 10th magnitude and was followed for two months, with …
Special Topic: Deflection Strategies
A common and persistent theme throughout “Ice and Stone 2020,” and indeed one of the primary reasons the “small bodies” of the solar system are of such high interest in the first place, is the threat they pose to Earth – or, at least, to our civilization and way of life here on Earth – …