Astrophysicists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU, Russia), South Korea, and the U.S. appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggesting carbon indicates time comets have spent in the Solar System—the less carbon, the longer they have been in the proximity of the Sun. The proof is their study of the comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4) approaching the Earth in…
Tag: ATLAS
NASA’s Perseverance rover attached to Atlas V rocket
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been attached to the top of the rocket that will send it toward the Red Planet this summer. Encased in the nose cone that will protect it during launch, the rover and the rest of the Mars 2020 spacecraft—the aeroshell, cruise stage, and descent stage—were affixed to a United Launch Alliance Atlas V booster on Tuesday,…
ATLAS experiment finds evidence of spectacular four-top quark production
The ATLAS Collaboration at CERN has announced strong evidence of the production of four top quarks. This rare Standard Model process is expected to occur only once for every 70 thousand pairs of top quarks created at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and has proven extremely difficult to measure. …
ATLAS Experiment searches for rare Higgs boson decays into a photon and a Z boson
The Higgs boson was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 through its decays into pairs of photons, W bosons and Z bosons. Since then, physicists at these experiments have gained great insight into the properties of the Higgs boson through the study of its different production and decay processes. Decays to pairs…
Biggest asteroid to pass close (and undetected) this year
Asteroid 2020 LD passed within the moon’s distance on June 5, but wasn’t discovered until June 7. It’s the 45th known and the largest asteroid to sweep within a lunar-distance of Earth so far in 2020. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-2020-ld-closer-than-moon-june-5-2020…
Astronomers recategorize asteroid-like comet
Recently discovered object 2019 LD2, originally believed to be the first cometary “Jupiter Trojan” asteroid by astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute for Astronomy turns out to be an interloper comet masquerading as a member of the Trojan population. The distinction was first suggested by amateur astronomers Sam Deen and Tony Dunn on the Minor Planet Mailing List…
Astronomers create cloud atlas for hot, Jupiter-like exoplanets
Giant planets in our solar system and circling other stars have exotic clouds unlike anything on Earth, and the gas giants orbiting close to their stars—so-called hot Jupiters—boast the most extreme. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-astronomers-cloud-atlas-hot-jupiter-like.html…
Air deliveries bring NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover closer to launch
Progress continues to speed along as NASA’s Perseverance rover readies for its launch this summer. On May 11, the rover team at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida received the tubes tasked with holding the first samples collected at Mars for eventual return to Earth. A week later, the Atlas V launch vehicle that will hurl Perseverance to the Red…
One of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids has a comet-like tail
Trojan asteroids orbit 60 degrees ahead of and behind Jupiter, in its wide orbit at 5 times Earth’s distance from the sun. Now the 1st Trojan asteroid has been found with a comet-like tail. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/jupiter-trojan-asteroid-2019-ld2-comet-like-tail…
ATLAS telescope discovers first-of-its-kind asteroid with a comet-like tail
We often think of asteroids and comets as distinct types of small bodies, but astronomers have discovered an increasing number of “crossovers.” These objects initially appear to be asteroids, and later develop activity, such as tails, that are typical of comets. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-atlas-telescope-first-of-its-kind-asteroid-comet-like.html…