asteroid belt tagged posts

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter preserves the processes of planetary formation, frozen in time. Vesta, the second largest asteroid in this belt, provides an outstanding opportunity for scientists to investigate the origin and formation of planets. In particular, Vesta has kept its crust, mantle and metallic core, much like Earth. Careful mapping of Vesta by NASA’s Dawn mission showed that the crust at the south pole of Vesta is unusually thick.

In a paper just published in Nature Geoscience, Dr. Yi-Jen Lai of the Macquarie University Planetary Research Centre and Macquarie GeoAnalytical and her colleagues propose a new evolutionary history of Vesta involving a giant impact...

A minor planet in the Solar System will officially be known as Bernardbowen from today after Australian citizen science project theSkyNet won a competition to name the celestial body. The minor planet was named by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in honour of their founding chairman Dr Bernard Bowen. Bernardbowen sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and takes 3.26 Earth years to orbit the Sun.

The minor planet was discovered on October 28, 1991, and until now has been known as (6196) 1991 UO4. Based at ICRAR, theSkyNet has been running since 2011 and sees citizen scientists donating their spare computing power to help Australian astronomers uncover the mysteries of the Universe...