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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday September 16 2018, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the peek-a-boo dept.

VLBA Measures Asteroid's Characteristics

In an unusual observation, astronomers used the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to study the effects on radio waves coming from a distant radio galaxy when an asteroid in our Solar System passed in front of the galaxy. The observation allowed them to measure the size of the asteroid, gain new information about its shape, and greatly improve the accuracy with which its orbital path can be calculated.

When the asteroid passed in front of the galaxy, radio waves coming from the galaxy were slightly bent around the asteroid's edge, in a process called diffraction. As these waves interacted with each other, they produced a circular pattern of stronger and weaker waves, similar to the patterns of bright and dark circles produced in terrestrial laboratory experiments with light waves.

"By analyzing the patterns of the diffracted radio waves during this event, we were able to learn much about the asteroid, including its size and precise position, and to get some valuable clues about its shape," said Jorma Harju, of the University of Helsinki in Finland.

The asteroid, named Palma, is in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Discovered in 1893 by French astronomer Auguste Charlois, Palma completes an orbit around the Sun every 5.59 years. On May 15, 2017, it obscured the radio waves from a galaxy called 0141+268 with the radio shadow tracing a path running roughly southwest to northeast, crossing the VLBA station at Brewster, Washington. The shadow sped across the Earth's surface at 32 miles per second.

372 Palma.


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  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday September 16 2018, @11:04PM

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Sunday September 16 2018, @11:04PM (#735764)

    Oh, yes, quite right. It is big for an asteroid, I think I was trying to make the point that it is small and hard to see from Earth.

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