asteroids

  • You Don’t Need to Duck

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 32, Number 3. Just recently, the folks at Live Science published a few articles about the risk of a dangerous asteroid hitting the Earth (see below). Is it time for us to start worrying? Have you heard of NEOs, PHAs, and PHOs? Well, these are Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), Potentially Hazardous Asteroids…

  • Asteroid 1, Dinosaurs 0

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 31, Number 15. The dinosaurs ruled the Earth for millions of years. Despite their dominance, the dinosaurs disappeared. The commonly accepted theory is that a large asteroid hit the Earth, resulting in the extinction of over two thirds of the species on the planet. For more on dinosaurs, see three previous…

  • Asteroids

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 21. When we think of our solar system, we typically think of our Sun, eight planets, and five dwarf planets. We often forget about the objects circling the Sun in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They are, of course, the asteroids. Most of the…

  • Occultation Alert

    Attention Occultation Alert  How many of us have seen a star occulted by an asteroid? It is kind of like watching a solar eclipse but in miniature, it is the passing of an asteroid in front of a star. This one occurs in the constelation of Auriga. On Friday Feb. 22, 2013 at 02:25UT (09:25pm…