Hubble Shoots Ceres and Vesta to Prepare for Dawn

There are photographs of asteroids Ceres (left) and Vesta (right), two of the most popular asteriods and much viewed by amateur astronomers in the solar system apart from Eros. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has taken their photographs to help prepare for the coming mission of the Dawn spacecraft, which will be the first satellite to tour a dwarf planet. To see a movie clip of Vesta rotating, click here.

Asteroid Grand Tour Determined by Scientists

Pictured is asteroid Ida with its small moon, 1993(2433)1 Dactyl, or simply Dactyl. Yes, here is an asteroid with a tiny asteroid orbiting around it. Scientists have been wanting to study asteroids even more these days. The problem is that there are too many of them and launching a space probe to any one of them may prove to be too expensive for such a small target with little expected scientific returns. Thus, they have decided to get teams to come up with an Asteroid Grand Tour in which an unmanned spacecraft shall visit at least four of a single or related type in an optimized manner.

The winning trajectory was identified by a team from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy. Two professors, Lorenzo Casalino and Guido Colasurdo, along with Ph.D. student Matteo Rosa Sentinella and graduate student Francesco Cacciatore, successfully eliminated billions of possible asteroid trips to focus on the most practical ones. Their winning proposal, involves visits to four different asteroids in over nine years.

The Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition was instituted in 2005 by Dario Izzo of the European Space Agency's Advanced Concepts Team.

Details on asteroid Ida may be found here: http://www.educnet.education.fr/svt/anim/ticeamiens501/Planetes/Asteroid/ida.htm

California Hit By Asteroid 35 Million Years Ago

This is a seismic map of a 5.5-kilometer-wide crater discovered west of Stockton, California. Samuel Spevack, a senior at Grossmont Middle College High School in El Cajon, California is leading the study of the impact site. His father, Bennet Spevack was the one who found the crater while looking at seismic data of the Central Valley region.

Philippine Tektites Presented

These are tektites from the Philippines, part of the Australasian strewn field the origins of which span two continents from Eurasia to Indochina. They are from my collection. If you wish to read more about them and see individual pictures, go to this address.

http://www.geocities.com/alvinwriter/tektites_philippinites.html

Search for crater source of Australasian tektites focused on Indochina.

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