Posted on 07/10/2019 7:54:57 PM PDT by ETL
A newly found asteroid has been spotted orbiting the Sun, whizzing past the star every 151 days, the shortest orbit of any space rock on record.
Known as 2019 LF6, this asteroid is quite large, at 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) across and is part of the "Atira" asteroid group, 20 space rocks whose orbits fall entirely within Earth's.
"Thirty years ago, people started organizing methodical asteroid searches, finding larger objects first, but now that most of them have been found, the bigger ones are rare birds," says Quanzhi Ye, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who discovered 2019 LF6, in a statement.
"LF6 is very unusual both in orbit and in sizeits unique orbit explains why such a large asteroid eluded several decades of careful searches," Ye added. "We only have about 20 to 30 minutes before sunrise or after sunset to find these asteroids."
One other Atira asteroid has been discovered by the ZTF team, 2019 AQ3, which orbits the Sun approximately once every 165 days.
"Both of the large Atira asteroids that were found by ZTF orbit well outside the plane of the solar system," NASA JPL research and Caltech professor Tom Prince said in the statement. "This suggests that sometime in the past they were flung out of the plane of the solar system because they came too close to Venus or Mercury."
In its elliptical 151-day orbit, 2019 LF6 goes out past Venus and at certain points, comes closer to the Sun than Mercury does. By comparison, Mercury orbits the Sun every 88 days, Venus' orbit takes 225 days and Earth orbits the Sun every 365 days.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Lol!
That’s the last thing on earth, or on any other world, that I want to try to visualize!
I figured that. I just thought it was a stupid thing to say. Because not everything going on in space or in the natural world in general need necessarily be a threat in order to be viewed as interesting. At least not if one has a functioning brain and even a morsel of curiosity. And if they’re not interested they shouldn’t click on the threads.
Yeah, I know. Astronomy is a hobby of mine. I have a six inch Newtonian refractor scope. Even though I live on The Jersey Shore my back yard faces due east and the Atlantic Ocean is about ten miles directly due east so I don’t have any light pollution problems. I’ve seen just about every constellation from my yard. As well as Saturn, Jupiter(which is visible now) Mars, and of course the Moon and any one number of meteor showers.
I thought I remembered your handle from other astronomy threads. :) Because I wasn’t sure if you were echoing what that fool had said.
Newtonian refractor? I thought all Newtonians were reflectors, like the Dobsonians and their smaller cousins.
Hey, if you were simply trying to explain what that other poster was saying, and not echoing it, I apologize for jumping on you like I did.
*****Newtonian refractor? I thought all Newtonians were reflectors, like the Dobsonians and their smaller cousins.*****
Yep. Dobson[ian] is the type of mount base, an alternative to a tripod. Has nothing to do with size. Orion makes Dobson mount Newtonian scopes from 4½ to 12 inch sizes. Mine is a 6 inch. The trade off is most don’t have tracking capability, it’s more difficult to add the motor drives to a Dobson mount. Many do have computer location capability. Train it on on two known stars and it can tell you when you get near anything in the sky using a series of LEDs, less dots means closer to the object. Same principle is used for their beginner level small refractor scopes.
This is my scope, no electronics.
https://www.telescope.com/Orion-SkyQuest-XT6-Classic-Dobsonian-Telescope/p/102004.uts
Orion makes a 130mm (5.1”) refractor that is $2400. They also make some low end/travel smaller refractor scopes in the 70 to 90 mm range for $100 to $200.
https://www.telescope.com/Telescopes/Refractor-Telescopes/pc/1/10.uts
Of course other companies make nice scopes, I’m just partial to Orion because mine has been excellent, and a couple of friends have 8 and 12 inch Orion scopes also have been excellent.
Definition:
The Newtonian telescope, also called the Newtonian reflector or just the Newtonian, is a type of reflecting telescope invented by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton, using a concave primary mirror and a flat diagonal secondary mirror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtonian_telescope
A 6 inch refractor would be a big scope, heavy and very expensive. On the other hand, I had a chance to use a 4 inch refractor scope at a star party one night, made my 6 inch Newtonian look inferior...
Not many large refractor scopes are around, at least not in amateur use, because of the expense. His 4 inch cost twice what my 6 inch Dobby did plus some. But it was really nice...most refractor scopes you see in amateur use are in the 2 to 2½” range and cheap beginner scopes.
Yep. Dobson[ian] is the type of mount base, an alternative to a tripod. Has nothing to do with size.
Sorry, but by "yep", were you agreeing with my understanding (or mis-understanding?) that there is no such thing as a "Newtonian refractor", only Newtonian reflector.
And I mentioned Dobsonian scopes as an example because they almost always are reflectors. By (their) "smaller cousins" I was referring to other forms of reflector scopes, such as tripod-mounted ones.
You are correct of course in that Dobsonian only refers to a specific type of telescope *mount*, invented by someone named Dobson. They are a very convenient, relatively inexpensive, type of telescope. Back a decade or so ago I had a 10-inch Dob. And, yes, they actually do now (for the past 20? years or so) make motorized Dobsonians.
The comment didn’t make much sense to me either and actually a misquote.
That looks like the old asteroids game.
Yes, I know. But that was the only aerial view with a 1 kilometer ruler embed into it that I could find at the time. Still, it does provide a decent perspective. I actually wanted to find an aerial of New York City, because it is something many people are familiar with.
Lol! It does!
It means the information is worthless.
Be sure to bring your own cup.
Thanks, but I knew that. I just wasn’t sure why the idiot thought it or some other info on the thread was “worthless”. The matter was discussed in more recent posts.
The George Washington Bridge is slightly less than 1.5 km.
And the distance between the two suspension towers is almost exactly 1 kilometer.
Thanks. That's a good one!
And with that in mind, let me try this again...
:)
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