Author Topic: Mysterious Near-Earth Asteroid Phaethon Just Got Even Weirde  (Read 131 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Online Buster's Uncle

  • With community service, I
  • Ascend
  • *
  • Posts: 49462
  • €241
  • View Inventory
  • Send /Gift
  • Because there are times when people just need a cute puppy  Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur  A WONDERFUL concept, Unity - & a 1-way trip that cost 400 trillion & 40 yrs.  
  • AC2 is my instrument, my heart, as I play my song.
  • Planet tales writer Smilie Artist Custom Faction Modder AC2 Wiki contributor Downloads Contributor
    • View Profile
    • My Custom Factions
    • Awards
Mysterious Near-Earth Asteroid Phaethon Just Got Even Weirde
« on: April 26, 2023, 05:43:21 PM »
Mysterious Near-Earth Asteroid Phaethon Just Got Even Weirder
Passant Rabie  Wed, April 26, 2023 at 9:21 AM EDT
Gizmodo



An illustration of the Phaethon asteroid as it orbits closely to the Sun.


A comet-like asteroid has been flaunting a tail of material as it approaches the Sun. But unlike its cometary counterparts, a fresh look at asteroid Phaethon reveals, this tail is made of sodium rather than dust, as was previously thought.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, recorded new observations of Phaethon as it passed near the Sun in May 2022. SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph imaged the asteroid using different filters: one that detects dust and another that detects sodium.

In the recently captured images, the asteroid’s tail appears bright in the orange, sodium-sensitive filter, while not appearing in the blue, dust-detecting filter. This suggests that Phaethon’s tail is the result of the emission of sodium atoms rather than dust escaping the surface of the asteroid during its solar flyby. The findings are detailed in a paper published Tuesday in the Planetary Science Journal.



On the left, the sodium-sensitive orange filter shows the asteroid with a small tail and on the right, the dust-sensitive blue filter shows no sign of Phaethon.


After seeing the asteroid’s short tail shine in the orange filter, the researchers behind the new study dug through old SOHO data to try to find more observations of Phaethon. They detected the asteroid in images dating back to more than 20 years ago.

“Our unique observing plan found the mysterious asteroid Phaethon for the first time in SOHO data,” Qicheng Zhang, PhD student at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of the paper, said in a statement by ESA. “By digging in the treasure chest of SOHO, we showed that Phaethon is visible in LASCO images from 18 different orbits back to 1997.”

Phaethon’s sodium tail adds even more mystery to this strange object. The asteroid was discovered in 1983 and named after the son of the Greek Sun god Helios for its close proximity to the star. Although classified as an asteroid, Phaethon has been showing some comet-like behavior. The rock is the likely origin of the Geminid meteor shower, which streaks across the sky in December. Most meteor showers, however, are produced by comets as a trail of debris left behind during their solar flyby.

In 2009, NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) observed a short tail that trails behind Phaethon that appeared during the asteroid’s closest approach to the Sun during its 524-day orbit. Comets tend to form icy tails of dusty material as their surface ice vaporizes due to the heat of the star.

The discovery of sodium in Phaethon’s tail could also hold clues to the origin of its meteor shower. Scientists had previously thought that the asteroid’s tail is what crated the Geminid meteor shower, but the latest observations show that the asteroid doesn’t shed enough dust for the shower to form. Instead, the researchers behind the new study suggest that a piece of Phaethon broke off around a few thousand years ago, causing the asteroid to eject a stream of billions of bits that make up the Geminids.

Scientists are set to gather more data on Phaethon through an upcoming mission to the asteroid. The Japanese space agency is sending the DESTINY+ mission to the celestial body in 2028 in an attempt to image its surface.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-near-earth-asteroid-phaethon-132100794.html

 

* User

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Select language:

* Community poll

SMAC v.4 SMAX v.2 (or previous versions)
-=-
24 (7%)
XP Compatibility patch
-=-
9 (2%)
Gog version for Windows
-=-
103 (32%)
Scient (unofficial) patch
-=-
40 (12%)
Kyrub's latest patch
-=-
14 (4%)
Yitzi's latest patch
-=-
89 (28%)
AC for Mac
-=-
3 (0%)
AC for Linux
-=-
6 (1%)
Gog version for Mac
-=-
10 (3%)
No patch
-=-
16 (5%)
Total Members Voted: 314
AC2 Wiki Logo
-click pic for wik-

* Random quote

The ancient Chinese had a name for it: Feng Shui. We call it energy flow. It is the same thing, the same thought: energy is everywhere, but only a fraction of it is tapped by humans for their purposes. Now the Progenitors have taught us that we can tap not only our own latent abilities, but the latent abilities of the Universe itself.
~Prophet Cha Dawn 'Planet Rising'

* Select your theme

*
Templates: 5: index (default), PortaMx/Mainindex (default), PortaMx/Frames (default), Display (default), GenericControls (default).
Sub templates: 8: init, html_above, body_above, portamx_above, main, portamx_below, body_below, html_below.
Language files: 4: index+Modifications.english (default), TopicRating/.english (default), PortaMx/PortaMx.english (default), OharaYTEmbed.english (default).
Style sheets: 0: .
Files included: 45 - 1228KB. (show)
Queries used: 37.

[Show Queries]