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4015 Wilson–Harrington
4015 Wilson–Harrington is an active asteroid known both as comet 107P/Wilson–Harrington and as asteroid 4015 Wilson–Harrington. It will pass from Earth on 20 July 2022 and then pass perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on 24 August 2022. It seldom gets brighter than apparent magnitude 16. This near-Earth object is considered both an Apollo asteroid with the designation ''4015 Wilson–Harrington'' and a periodic comet known as ''Comet Wilson–Harrington'' or ''107P/Wilson–Harrington''. It was initially discovered in 1949 as a comet and then lost to further observations. Thirty years later it was rediscovered as an asteroid, after which it took over a decade to determine that these observations were of the same object. Therefore, it has both a comet designation and an asteroid designation, and with a name length of 17 characters it is currently the asteroid with the longest name, having one more character than the 16-character limit imposed by the IAU. The comet was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert George Wilson
Albert George Wilson (July 28, 1918 – August 27, 2012) was an American astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets. He was born in Houston, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech in 1947; his thesis title was ''Axially Symmetric Thermal Stresses in a Semi-Infinite Solid'' advised by Harry Bateman. In 1949 he accepted a job at Palomar Observatory, and led the Palomar Sky Survey. In 1953 he became assistant director of Lowell Observatory, and served as director from 1954 to 1957. He later worked at Rand Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ... and other private sector positions. In 1962 he became founding editor of the astronomical magazine ''Icarus (journal), Icarus''. In 1966, he accepted the position of associate director of McDonne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palomar Observatory
Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observatory is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Yale University, and the National Optical Observatories of China. The observatory operates several telescopes, including the Hale Telescope, the Samuel Oschin Telescope (dedicated to the Zwicky Transient Facility, ZTF), the Palomar Telescope, and the Gattini-IR telescope. Decommissioned instruments include the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and the first telescopes at the observatory, an Schmidt camera from 1936. History Hale's vision for large telescopes and Palomar Observatory Astronomer George Ellery Hale, whose vision created the Palomar Observatory, built the world's largest telescope four times in succession. He publishe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astrometric
Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way. History The history of astrometry is linked to the history of star catalogues, which gave astronomers reference points for objects in the sky so they could track their movements. This can be dated back to Hipparchus, who around 190 BC used the catalogue of his predecessors Timocharis and Aristillus to discover Earth's precession. In doing so, he also developed the brightness scale still in use today. Hipparchus compiled a catalogue with at least 850 stars and their positions. Hipparchus's successor, Ptolemy, included a catalogue of 1,022 stars in his work the ''Almagest'', giving their location, coordinates, and brightness. In the 10th century, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi carried out observations on the stars and described their positions, magnitu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
176P/LINEAR
118401 LINEAR, provisional designation , is an asteroid and main-belt comet (176P/LINEAR)(older 2010 site) that was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) 1-metre telescopes in on September 7, 1999. (118401) LINEAR was discovered to be cometary on November 26, 2005, by Henry H. Hsieh and |
118401 LINEAR
118401 LINEAR, provisional designation , is an asteroid and main-belt comet (176P/LINEAR)(older 2010 site) that was discovered by the (LINEAR) 1-metre telescopes in Socorro, New Mexico on September 7, 1999. (118401) LINEAR was discovered to be on November 26, 2005, by Henry H. Hsieh and [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
60558 Echeclus
60558 Echeclus is a centaur, approximately in diameter, located in the outer Solar System. It was discovered by Spacewatch in 2000 and initially classified as a minor planet with provisional designation (also written 2000 EC98). Research in 2001 by Rousselot and Petit at the Besançon observatory in France indicated that it was not a comet, but in December 2005 a cometary coma was detected. In early 2006 the Committee on Small Bodies Nomenclature (CSBN) gave it the cometary designation 174P/Echeclus. It last came to perihelion in April 2015, and was expected to reach about apparent magnitude 16.7 near opposition in September 2015. Name ''Echeclus'' is a centaur in Greek mythology. 60558 Echeclus is only the second comet (after Chiron) that was named as a minor planet, rather than after the name of its discoverer. Chiron is also a centaur; other centaurs are being observed for signs of a cometary coma. Besides Echeclus, eight other objects are cross-listed as both comets a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
7968 Elst–Pizarro
Comet Elst–Pizarro is a body that displays characteristics of both asteroids and comets, and is the prototype of active asteroids. Its orbit keeps it within the asteroid belt, yet it displayed a dust tail like a comet while near perihelion in 1996, 2001, and 2007. * As a comet it is formally designated 133P/Elst–Pizarro. * As an asteroid it is designated 7968 Elst–Pizarro. Elst–Pizarro was reported in 1979 as minor planet , with its image on a photographic plate being completely stellar in appearance. Its orbit remains entirely within the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, with eccentricity (orbit), eccentricity 0.165, typical of a minor planet in the asteroid belt. However, the images taken by Eric W. Elst and Guido Pizarro in 1996, when it was near perihelion, clearly show a cometary tail. Since this is not normal behaviour for asteroids, it is suspected that Elst–Pizarro has a different, probably icy, composition. The cometary nature of Elst–Pizarro was first discovered wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2060 Chiron
2060 Chiron is a small Solar System body in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. Discovered in 1977 by Charles Kowal, it was the first-identified member of a new class of objects now known as centaurs—bodies orbiting between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt.944 Hidalgo, discovered in 1920, also fits this definition, but was not identified as belonging to a distinct population. Although it was initially called an asteroid and classified only as a minor planet with the designation "2060 Chiron", in 1989 it was found to exhibit behavior typical of a comet. Today it is classified as both a minor planet and a comet, and is accordingly also known by the cometary designation 95P/Chiron. Chiron is named after the centaur Chiron in Greek mythology. History Discovery Chiron was discovered on 1 November 1977 by Charles Kowal from images taken on 18 October at Palomar Observatory. It was given the temporary designation of . It was found near aphe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid
A potentially hazardous object (PHO) is a near-Earth object – either an asteroid or a comet – with an orbit that can make close approaches to the Earth and is large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact. They are defined as having a minimum orbit intersection distance with Earth of less than and an absolute magnitude of 22 or brighter. More than 99% of the known potentially hazardous objects are not an impact threat over the next 100 years. , only 17 potentially hazardous objects are listed on the Sentry Risk Table as objects that are known not to be a threat over the next hundred years are excluded. Over hundreds if not thousands of years, "potentially hazardous" asteroids have the potential for their orbits to evolve to live up to their namesake. Most of these objects are potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), and a few are comets. there are 2,304 known PHAs (about 8% of the total near-Earth population), of which 153 are estimated to be large ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minor Planet
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor planet'', but that year's meeting reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs).Press release, IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes International Astronomical Union, August 24, 2006. Accessed May 5, 2008. Minor planets include asteroids ( |
Asteroid Belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called asteroids or minor planets. This asteroid belt is also called the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. The asteroid belt is the smallest and innermost known circumstellar disc in the Solar System. About 60% of its mass is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. The total mass of the asteroid belt is calculated to be 3% that of the Moon. Ceres, the only object in the asteroid belt large enough to be a dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea have mean diameters less than 600 km. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eccentricity (orbit)
In astrodynamics, the orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a dimensionless parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle. A value of 0 is a circular orbit, values between 0 and 1 form an elliptic orbit, 1 is a parabolic escape orbit (or capture orbit), and greater than 1 is a hyperbola. The term derives its name from the parameters of conic sections, as every Kepler orbit is a conic section. It is normally used for the isolated two-body problem, but extensions exist for objects following a rosette orbit through the Galaxy. Definition In a two-body problem with inverse-square-law force, every orbit is a Kepler orbit. The eccentricity of this Kepler orbit is a non-negative number that defines its shape. The eccentricity may take the following values: * circular orbit: ''e'' = 0 * elliptic orbit: 0 < ''e'' < 1 * [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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