Yale Bulletin and Calendar

August 30, 2002|Volume 31, Number 1|Two-Week Issue

Astronomy students capture asteroid's close fly-by of Earth

Yale students used the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory to capture a series of still images of asteroid 2002 NY40 on Aug. 15-16, two nights before its close flyby of Earth.

These images have been turned into a short digital movie that demonstrates the speed of the 2002 NY40 as seen from Earth over a period of about two hours. The movie is available for downloading at the following website: www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr02/pr0207.html

Yale undergraduate Brandy Heflin and graduate student Bing Zhao were at the 0.9-meter telescope conducting research on exotic binary stars when they decided to interrupt their work to observe this unique event. A consortium of universities including Indiana University, San Francisco State, the University of Florida, Wesleyan University and four University of Wisconsin campuses took over operation of the 0.9-meter from the National Science Foundation last March in order to give their students more hands-on research time.

"These unplanned observations are true to the spirit of the reasons that the university partnership took over operational responsibility for the telescope," says Charles Bailyn, professor and chair of astronomy, Heflin's and Zhao's research mentor at Yale. "We want to encourage students to take the initiative, and they did a very nice job. There is also some real science to be gleaned from these observations, in terms of brightness fluctuations and the rotational period of
the asteroid."

The movie shows the asteroid crossing an area of the sky about equal to a full moon, traveling northwest through the constellation Aquarius. Two nights later, during its close approach to Earth, the asteroid was moving across the sky about 20 times faster.

Discovered on July 14, 2002, the asteroid has an estimated diameter of 700 meters (0.43 miles). It passed safely by Earth on the night of Aug. 17-18 at a distance of approximately 524,000 kilometers (326,000 miles), about 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

For the sake of comparison, if a person were riding on the asteroid and looking back toward Earth during its close passage, the planet would have appeared nearly three times larger in the sky than the Moon does from Earth.

A long-exposure image of the asteroid taken by the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on the night of Aug. 17 showed no obvious evidence that 2002 NY40 is a binary asteroid, a possibility being investigated by radio telescopes and other observatories.

The digital movie of 2002 NY40 was created by the staff of the Public Affairs & Educational Outreach department at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, Arizona.

NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. NOAO operates telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory near La Serena, Chile, and it is the U.S. partner in the International Gemini Observatory.

-- By Jacqueline Weaver

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

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Yale will commemorate anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks with discussion, reflection

PepsiCo president Indra Nooyi elected to Yale Corporation

Astronomy students capture asteroid's close fly-by of Earth

Levin lauds Princeton president for her response to Web violation

Howe appointed William R. Kenan Professor

Ma is named Raymond John Wean Professor

Conference to 'put a human face' on the Vietnam War

In Focus: Biodiversity and Human Health Institute

Study: Positive images of old age conducive to long life

Library's debut of Voyager makes searches easier

Show celebrates industrial art turned creative art

Wooden artworks from collection given to Yale gallery on view

Two environmental leaders to teach at F&ES as visiting faculty

Junior faculty honored

OBITUARIES

School of Architecture hosting '3D City' exhibition

Sri Lankan artist Jayasuriya's paintings on display at ISM

Ethics of studies on children to be explored in fall program

Talk focuses on technology's effect on humans

Journalists to gain insight into legal affairs as Knight Fellows

Yale Club of New Haven supports students' work in community

Proper skin care reduces chance of bedsores, say YSN researchers

Books in Brief

Campus Notes

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