Category Archives: Small SS Objects

includes asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, comets

Halley’s Comet

Posted on April 8, 2014 by katiew

Halley’s Comet is the most well known comet because it is the only short-term comet that is visible from Earth with the naked eye. Halley’s Comet was seen multiple times throughout history. The first known observation of Halley’s Comet was in 239 B.C. by Chinese astronomers. When it returned in 164 B.C. and 87 B.C. […] Continue reading →

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Is Pluto a Planet?

Posted on April 7, 2014 by hindsolar

  I can recall sitting and listening to an astronomy presentation during my eighth grade year. The man who presented told us that Pluto was no longer a planet. For some reason this bothered me because all my life I had been told that Pluto was in fact a planet. I can also recall taking […] Continue reading →

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Impacts on Saturn and the Drake equation

Posted on April 29, 2013 by werdercj

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft recently observed meteors colliding with Saturn’s thin rings.  This marked the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings, although astronomers already expected this to be occurring regularly.  However, specific details of such impacts were merely speculation, much of which is cleared up via […] Continue reading →

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A Changing Vision

Posted on April 19, 2013 by a2megal

In the news recently (back at the end of March), astronomers began to hypothesize (running simulations and doing extensive calculations) about what would happen if Comet 2013 A1 were to hit mars. Right now, this 1 to 3 km in diameter (the nucleus size) comet has a roughly 1 in 2000 chance of impacting Mars. […] Continue reading →

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New Way to Study Asteroids

Posted on April 11, 2013 by jacksonlangham

NASA and the White House just announced the space agency’s budget for the 2014 fiscal year. Included in that budget is a $100 million dollar project to retrieve and research […] Continue reading →

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A Comet Heads For Mars

Posted on April 10, 2013 by jacksonlangham

NASA has discovered that there is “small but non-negligible” chance that Comet 2013 A1 will strike Mars in October of 2014. The comet is between 1 to 3 kilometers in […] Continue reading →

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By Chance…

Posted on March 17, 2013 by a2megal

I set out without a real direction for this blog post. (I suppose that makes sense since some of the more interesting discoveries you can come across on the web pop up when you jump from page-to-page.) During my search for a new and interesting article on some aspect of astronomy, I came across a […] Continue reading →

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Near-Earth Objects: Experiences and Implications

Posted on February 20, 2013 by werdercj

Meteor trail over Eastern Russia. On February 15, 2013, two very significant astronomical events occurred unusually close to us; the highly publicized meteor explosion over a Russian city overshadowed the close approach of a much larger asteroid orbiting Earth.  The contrast between these two events is what struck me as most interesting and informative about […] Continue reading →

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Using Paintballs to Deflect Asteroids

Posted on February 19, 2013 by AlanL

As you probably know on Friday February 15th there were two meteors heading Earth’s way. One of which crashed in Russia injuring over 1,000 people and the other missed Earth by 17,000 miles. The one that hit Russia was only 1.5 the size of a school bus while the other was 3 times that. Obviously […] Continue reading →

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The whole asteroid thing!

Posted on February 16, 2013 by drgrundstrom

There have been some pretty amazing things going on with asteroids the past couple of days, namely the passing of Asteroid 2012 DA14 and the Russian Meteor Event.   But they were completely unrelated!  Here is an excellent infographic for you (click to make bigger): We weren’t going to be seeing that little 50-foot asteroid […] Continue reading →

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