Friday, September 4, 2009

UAnews.org | Evening Lectures on Migrating Planets, Hazardous Asteroids Search


In this artist's concept, a narrow asteroid belt filled with rocks and dusty debris orbits a star similar to our own sun when it was approximately 30 million years old. (Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T.Pyle, SSC)

Planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra will speak on “Migrating Planets” on Tuesday, Sept. 15.

Did the solar system always look the way it is now? New studies by Malhotra and others find that the outer planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – were more tightly clustered in the early solar system, then moved away from each other.

Malhotra’s models show that as the solar system evolved, Jupiter moved slightly closer to the sun, while the other giant planets moved farther apart from each other and farther away from the sun.

The migration likely perturbed asteroids that contributed to the heavy bombardment of the inner solar system.

The evidence is recorded as close as the moon and as far away as Pluto.

Catalina Sky Survey director Ed Beshore will talk on “The Search for Hazardous Asteroids from Mount Lemmon” on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

On Oct. 5, 2008, the UA’s Catalina Sky Survey discovered a small asteroid named 2008 TC3. It is the first asteroid discovered with a 100 percent certainty of colliding with Earth.

Just 17 hours after Catalina Sky Survey team member Rich Kowalski discovered 2008 TC3, it fell harmlessly in the desert of northern Sudan. During those 17 hours, amateur and professional astronomers made more than 570 observations of the asteroid. Months later, U.S. and African students and researchers recovered more than eight pounds of meteorites from the fall.

Beshore will also talk about how the Catalina Sky Survey searchers for dangerous asteroids, and some ideas about what might be done if an Earth-threatening asteroid is found.

Research

Astro-ph

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