The Author – Bart Busschots
Creative Commons
Unless otherwise stated, the content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Oct
29
Another Irish Asteroid!
Filed Under Science & Astronomy on October 29, 2008 at 10:27 pm
They’re coming thick and fast now! It’s only a few weeks ago that I happily blogged about my friend Dave McDonald becoming only the second person ever to discover an Asteroid from Irish soil. Well, another of the shining lights of Ireland’s amateur astronomical community (and another Dave as it happens) has discovered the third ever astroid from Irish soil! Dave is a very active amateur who’s involved with both Astronomy Ireland and the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies. Dave, if you’re reading this, congrats!
If you’ve ever wondered just how much of a needle in a hay-stack an asteroid is check out the observations of the asteroid on Dave’s website, the animation in particular rams home the point!
What makes this even MORE unbelievable is that the Daves saw through the constant cloud cover that is Ireland’s!
I did a teeny bit of math – a 4.5km asteroid 250M km away would be an arc of 1×10-6 degrees!
very very cool, guys.
I liked how the Times reported on this: ‘Like celestial buses, you wait 160 years for a new asteroid and then two come along at once.’
Yea, I did enjoy that opening line. For anyone interested here’s the link to the full story from the Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1029/1225197273692.html
Bart.
This is so interesting and very very cool. Yay for science! Even though I don’t understand half of it!!!