Earth's First Asteroid Companion Discovered

This is an amazing discovery. Up until now, companion asteroids that more or less share an orbit with Earth have been theoretical. This class of asteroids is known as Trojans; Jupiter has them, and so do Mars and Neptune. Now Earth joins the club with 2010 TK₇, an asteroid approximately 300 meters (1000 feet) across and 80 million km (50 million miles) from Earth.

Asteroid 2010 TK7 is circled in green, in this single frame taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) managed to notice the small asteroid. WISE sees in the infrared, where warmer objects are easier to spot. 2010 TK₇ is probably about the freezing point of water, which is pretty warm to astronomers. It also orbits such that it is mostly in the sky during daylight hours from Earth, so your typical amateur astronomer isn't going to be able to go out and spot this.

WISE was an asteroid hunting satellite that stopped operating back in February. Astronomers discovered 2010 TK₇ by looking through the vast amount of data collected by WISE and confirmed it with Earth-based telescopes. This gives hope that other Earth Trojans might be buried in the data waiting to be found. Where there is one, there may be many.

What makes a Trojan, a companion asteroid, special, is that they orbit what is called a Lagrangian point. Five special spots between two astronomical bodies where gravity is essentially neutral. The points remain stable relative to where the one body is along its orbit around the other. The graph above maps out the locations of where these points would be.

2010 TK₇ orbits Earth's L4 point, rather than remaining stable at the point or orbiting the Earth itself. It also has a kind of funky orbit that takes it closer and further away from the Earth, but it is still roughly 60 degrees in front of us and of no danger to the Earth. It just won't ever get close enough.

This artist's concept (not to scale) illustrates the first known Earth Trojan asteroid, discovered by WISE. The asteroid is gray and its extreme orbit is shown in green. Image credit: Paul Wiegert, University of Western Ontario, Canada

It is a tantalizing discovery because it opens the door to several new questions. We know little about this asteroid. It may be a candidate for future exploration, but because of it's odd orbit (it goes well above and below the orbital plane), it would be difficult to reach. But you can bet astronomers are going race to find more Earth Trojans. They have been looking for them for some time already, so it was only a matter of time.

And being an object of some importance, it will also need to be named. Coeus or Crius, the Titan sons of Gaia have been mentioned, but there are other sons of hers. Personally I wouldn't my the cyclopes sons of Gaia; Brontes ("thunderer"), Steropes ("lightning") and the "bright" Arges. But I guess we'll have to see.

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Posted in 2010 TK7,Asteroids,awesome,Earth,Trojan,WISE 22 comments

Our Changing Solar System

As they keep searching, astronomers learn more and more about how our Solar System formed. There is a good amount of understanding on how things happened, but a lot of the finer details of just why things appear the way they do still have to be answered.

Our Solar System is like a giant cosmic puzzle, and we are constantly finding new clues about the course of its evolution.

This week a few amazing findings that are redefining the way we understand our Solar System, planet formation, and what we might expect to find in other star systems.

An artistic rendition of the impact that created the Moon.

The idea that our Earth-Moon configuration is a rare occurrence has been challenged by simulations. Our Moon is considered to be disproportionally large, at over a quarter of the Earth's diameter. The Moon was formed from a large impact between a young Earth and a Mars-sized planet. The simulations run by researchers from the University of Zurich's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Switzerland and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado show that these kinds of impacts might actually be much more common, perhaps as many as one in 10 rocky planets around a Sun-like star may host a large moon.

What is even better about this news, it is a way to help identify possible habitable planets. The Moon plays a large role in making the Earth a livable place between blocking would-be impactors and stirring the tides. Other planets with large moons could be ripe for life.

In this artist's conception, gas and dust—the raw materials for making planets—swirl around a young star. The planets in our solar system formed from a similar disk of gas and dust captured by our Sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The planet-sized object that glanced the Earth might have gotten its gravitational push from Jupiter. In another piece of news, researchers from around the world and NASA have developed a new model about the early motions of planets in our Solar System. The biggest news in this is the roaming of Jupiter, at one point it would have wandered almost as close to the Sun as Mars (before Mars was there), it would have only been stopped by the counter pull of Saturn.

The effects of Jupiter's motions have a profound impact. Over millions of years, Jupiter would have pushed around objects in our neighborhood. The nature of the asteroid belt would owe itself to these gravitational interactions. And probably the biggest impact is that Jupiter prevented Mars from growing to a larger planet. Jupiter either absorbed or scattered most of the material in the region Mars exists in, leaving slim pickings for planet formation.

A previous concept about the edge of our Solar System, which may be changing with new findings. Credit: NASA

And the last story about our amazing Solar System doesn't quite flow with the other two as well, but is still important. NASA is holding a teleconference on June 9 to discuss conditions at the edge of the Solar System. Based on data from the Voyager probes, the view of the edge of our Solar System needs to be changed.

The discussion will be about "a new computer model that shows the edge of our solar system is not smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles." Since this is a poorly understood and previously unexplored region, there is much to be learned. Understanding is important though, this is a region that protects us from galactic cosmic rays.

Another reason why I am interested in this particular conference is because one of the panelists I have met before. Merav Opher used to be an assistant professor at my alma mater, George Mason University. She is wonderfully intelligent and I have found her work with the Voyager probes absolutely fascinating.

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Posted in Earth,Jupiter,Mars,Moon,Solar System,Voyager 33 comments

Decrease the Suck, Increase the Awesome

So NASA now has an unofficial new slogan. I kinda like it. It's pretty true of what NASA does and comes from an inventive vlogger Hank Green. The most recent video can be seen below, which NASA helped to make.

It initially started with Green's video "Top 5 Awesome Things About the Webb Telescope" and has been quickly taken up by the community as a great way to describe NASA and reasoning for supporting continued scientific support in the United States. It is especially important Congress is debating the science budget that currently leaves scientists in limbo. The main thing that is clear is that both the House and the Senate are proposing cuts to science funding, with the most massive proposed cuts coming from House Republicans. (See this Nature chart for the numbers) Those cuts also include the EPA, NIST, NSF, Department of Energy, NIH and CDC.

I had also recently mentioned SETI's budget woes, and donated $5 to the cause. But over at μcosmologist they have a great infographic on SETI. Of course, if you need a good reason why you should support SETI, listen to the words of Carl Sagan.

There is also the good news that Osama bin Laden is dead, as I'm sure most of you have heard by now. I don't know that some of the celebrations over the death of a man  are warranted, it is better move for humanity though, decreasing the suck. But, I do have to mention one observation that kinda struck me, a tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson: Two American goals that took a decade, and more than $100 billion to achieve: 1) Walk on the Moon 2) Find Bin Laden.

From xkcd, another wonderful webcomic.

I try to imagine a world, were after the decade spent going to the Moon, we spent the subsequent decades pushing further out into space, where now we could be exploring the Outer Solar System more then just by sending the occasional probe out there. It could have been an even more amazing time, and we may have avoided a reality with the disasters committed by those who seek only to inspire terror and fear.

I think a befitting line for this is the hover text quote from that comic above: "The Universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space -- each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."

It's a sobering time, but I'm also optimistic about it. We are in a Golden Age of astronomy, we have learned more about our place in the Universe in the past 20-50 years then in the entirety of human history. It's a great feeling. For the first time we are able to put telescopes into space to peer into its darkest corners and listen to its darkest secrets. We cannot allow those eyes and ears to be shut, eventually we will need to seize upon the stars. The Earth won't be habitable forever, something we are becoming more and more aware of through the study of our home.

But more countries are getting into the space business. With China ramping things up and Iran looking at getting into the fray, as well as SpaceX pioneering corporate space flight, we are on the brink of a new space race that might just kick start a change in U.S. policy. The future is space, there is no doubt about that, its just a matter of making people believe in decreasing the suck and increasing the awesome.

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On a more positive/humorous note, I thought this film looks kinda awesome based off of the trailer:

From the io9.com description:

Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well on Ganymede
Based on the book by Bradley Denton, John Heder plays Buddy Holly who is still very much alive and working on secret space missions across the universe. Here is the first teaser trailer for the film. Looks extraordinarily sweet.
Here's a synopsis of the novel:

When televisions worldwide begin broadcasting a nonstop, noninterruptible live performance by Buddy Holly purporting to originate somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter, Oliver Vale—the apparent object of the broadcasts—finds himself drafted for a mission so secret that even he is not sure of its purpose. Denton fills this supremely funny novel with warring space aliens disguised as humans, a robot dog, a psychopathic assassin, an overzealous psychologist and her jealous husband, a motorcycle gang, and a messianic televangelist—all to prove that rock 'n' roll never really died.

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Posted in Astronomy,awesome,Buddy Holly,Earth,James Webb,NASA,News,webcomic 27 comments

Fantastic Planet

So you may have noticed I didn't write anything yesterday. I just wasn't feeling it. When I write, I want it to feel like something I want to do, to have if flow from me. I believe it should be an enjoyable experience. And yesterday it just wasn't on, so I didn't post. In the mean time, I've been thinking of some future posts I might want to make. Getting an idea for future content has been pretty important for this blog so far, as you might tell from a lot of my posts, I tend to do my homework.

Anyways, today is Earth Day! Hurray for the Earth! If you haven't figured it out after spending your entire life here, the Earth is a pretty awesome place. It's got liquid water, oxygen, an atmosphere, complex carbons, and various forms of protection including the ozone layer and magnetosphere. All of these make Earth a pretty comfortable place for life! In fact it is the only place in the whole Universe where we know for a fact life exists! And it is some pretty amazing and complex life all on its own.

The Earth is a fantastic planet and we should all be so lucky to owe our existence to it's being in the right place with the right stuff. So please take care of your Earth, where ever human's may go in the Universe, it will always be home.

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This next part is dedicated to my friend Leroy. I've known him for years and he is a bit of a musician and a street performer. If you've ever been to D.C. you might have seen him too, he tends to dress in a folky style and plays his guitar just about everywhere. You can check out a couple of his tracks on SoundCloud.

I made a promise to Leroy to watch the movie Fantastic Planet and write about it, now this was a good month and half to two months ago. I've been putting it off a bit, but the version he wanted me to watch is on Google videos and re-scored in 2003 with industrial/experimental music like Aphex Twin. Anyways, with Google videos being shut down on April 29, he reminded me to watch it before it got taken off.

If you haven't heard of Fantastic Planet before, it is a French animated science fiction film from 1973, and is a bit trippy. The French name is La Planète Sauvage, or The Savage Planet. It follows the story of a human named Terr on the planet of the Traags. The Traags are a hundred times larger then humans, and blue, and well, look like the thing in the picture above. Humans are also known as "Oms," a play on the French word for men, hommes. Now, I may spoil some of the story for you, but I don't expect many of you to actually go watch the movie.

The Traags apparently picked up the Oms from Terra (Earth) after some sort of apocalyptic event, images show destroyed structures and technology. Being that this movie was made during the Cold War, it is a good bet this was an influence on this imagery. Oms seemed to have originally been gathered for labor, but quickly grew into being domesticated pets for some, while wild ones were seen as pests. In fact, the treatment of Oms seemed to contrast with their high level of technology and spiritual development.

The planet of the Traags is pretty funky. The lifeforms there are all the kind of trippy things you would expect on an alien planet. A week on the planet roughly equates to a human year, and one of their 3 seasons is about 15 human years. The Traags also spend a large amount of meditating. In the end the meditating turns out to sort of 'astral project' themselves on to their moon, called the Amazing Planet, were the meet with other meditating travelers from across the galaxy and dance, which some how allows them to breed.

While the Oms seem like pests, its mostly because, well, most people I know can actually be pests, ha. But they end up living a rat like existence in abandoned parks, stealing food from Traag homes, and generally unintelligent. Until Terr comes along with a knowledge headphone that he stole from his former master. The Oms are seen to breed much faster then the Traags too, the Traags tend to 'de-om' every 3 cycles (?) which is more then enough for a whole Om generation to grow. After the Oms kill a Traag who tries to crush them with his feet, the Traags go over time, de-oming twice a cycle with new technology.

Terr and the other Oms hide out in an abandoned rocket dump, where they learn from Traag technology and build their own rockets, in the hope of escaping to the Amazing Planet. They escape in the nick of time and discover the Traag's secret of the moon and start blasting their vulnerable astral projections with lasers. This threatens to destroy Traag society, so the leader of the Traags offers to make peace and stop killing the Oms. An artificial satellite is made about the Fantastic Planet, named Terr.

Typically, this kind of trippy movie isn't my sort of thing. The animation was a bit humorous though, some of it reminded me of that Monty Python style. The soundtrack was pretty excellent though, I guess that has to do more with it being re-scored with more modern music. The story was a pretty good one too, a fairly solid science fiction story, and I am one who enjoys some science fiction.

That wraps up my little review of this movie. You can watch the film here for yourself before it gets taken down on April 29. And don't forget to keep voting for this Tuesday's Astro-Lesson in the sidebar! Happy Earth Day, and for those who celebrate it, have a good Good Friday and Hoppy Easter.

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Posted in Earth,Earth Day,Fantastic Planet,Leroy,Life 18 comments