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Asteriod

This document contains images and descriptions of several asteroids observed by the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope and the NASA Dawn spacecraft. It discusses the discovery dates and characteristics of asteroids 2 Pallas, 89 Julia, 29 Amphitrite, 324 Bamberga, 4 Vesta, 3 Juno, 5 Astraea, and 6 Hebe. The images reveal details of the shapes and surfaces of these asteroids and show that they have a variety of compositions, sizes, and ages despite the sparse nature of the asteroid belt.

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Sherwin Hermano
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44 views

Asteriod

This document contains images and descriptions of several asteroids observed by the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope and the NASA Dawn spacecraft. It discusses the discovery dates and characteristics of asteroids 2 Pallas, 89 Julia, 29 Amphitrite, 324 Bamberga, 4 Vesta, 3 Juno, 5 Astraea, and 6 Hebe. The images reveal details of the shapes and surfaces of these asteroids and show that they have a variety of compositions, sizes, and ages despite the sparse nature of the asteroid belt.

Uploaded by

Sherwin Hermano
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Pallas, 1802

Ceres, 1801

VLT's SPHERE spies rocky worlds From the


Approximate true-color image of Ceres, using the
description at File:Potw1749a.tif: These images
F7 ('red'), F2 ('green') and F8 ('blue') filters,
were taken by ESO's SPHERE (Spectro-
projected onto a clear filter image. Images were
Polarimetric High-Contrast Exoplanet Research)
acquired by Dawn at 04:13 UT May 4, 2015, at a
instrument, installed on the Very Large
distance of 13641 km. At the time, Dawn was over
Telescope at the Paranal Observatory, Chile.
Ceres' northern hemisphere. The prominent, bright
These strikingly-detailed views reveal four of the
crater at right is Haulani. The smaller bright spot to
millions of rocky bodies in the main asteroid belt, a
its left is exposed on the floor of Oxo. Ejecta from
ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that
these impacts appears to have exposed high
separates the rocky inner planets of the Solar
albedo material similar to deposits found on the
System from the gaseous and icy outer planets.
floor of Occator Crater. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-
Clockwise from top left, the asteroids shown here
Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / Justin Cowart
are 29 Amphitrite, 324 Bamberga, 2 Pallas, and 89
Julia. Named after the Greek goddess Pallas
Athena, 2 Pallas is about 510 kilometres wide. This
makes it the third largest asteroid in the main belt
and one of the biggest asteroids in the entire Solar
System. It contains about 7% of the mass of the
entire asteroid belt — so hefty that it was once
classified as a planet. A third of the size of 2 Pallas,
89 Julia is thought to be named after St Julia of
Corsica. Its stony composition led to its
classification as an S-type asteroid. Another S-type
asteroid is 29 Amphitrite, which was only
discovered in 1854. 324 Bamberga, one of the
largest C-type asteroid in the asteroid belt, was
discovered even later: Johann Palisa found it in
1892. Today, it is understood that C-type asteroids
may actually be bodies from the outer Solar System
following the migration of the giant planets. As
such, they may contain ice in their interior. Although
the asteroid belt is often portrayed in science fiction
as a place of violent collisions, packed full of large
rocks too dangerous for even the most skilled of
space pilots to navigate, it is actually very sparse.
In total, the asteroid belt contains just 4% of the
mass of the Moon, with about half of this mass
contained in the four largest residents: Ceres, 4
Vesta, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea.
Vesta, 1807
Juno, 1803 Vesta is a colorful world; craters of a variety of ages
make splashes of lighter and darker brown against
5 minute exposure of asteroid 3 Juno (bright object its surface. This photo was processed from data
in center) with a 24" telescope. Juno is apparent acquired on July 24, 2011, from a distance of about
magnitude 7.6 in this image taken at 2009-09-22 5200 kilometers, during the third "rotation
07:00 UT. Stars brighter than the 11th magnitude characterization" observation by Dawn.
are over-exposed resulting in the white streaks. To
the left you can also see the
galaxies PGC73151 (upper)
and PGC73143 (lower). The two galaxies are
roughly magnitude 13.5. The star to the right of
PGC73151 is about magnitude 17.
Astraea, 1845

Hebe, July 1847

This image, taken by the SPHERE instrument on


the VLT Telescope, shows the asteroid 6 Hebe.

Astraea, 1845
A three-dimensional model of 5 Astraea that was
computed using light curve inversion techniques.

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