I stumbled across this rather lovely size comparison of small Solar System objects, and I thought I’d share. Click it for a larger view! Taking pride of place is Ceres, empress of asteroids, with her smaller sibling Vesta, the largest … Continue reading
Asteroids are just boring hunks of space rock, right? Well, you might have thought so. But you would be wrong. Well… Mostly wrong. Some of them are rather interesting. This particular interesting hunk of space rock is 10199 Chariklo, and … Continue reading
So, does anyone remember Apophis? You know, the asteroid named after an Ancient Egyptian mythological demon which is around half a kilometre in diameter and has an ever so small chance of raining fiery doom upon us all in the … Continue reading
Darth Vader was unimpressed by asteroids. Which, I suppose, is natural when you’re a sith lord. However, a lot of people find them rather interesting indeed. So if you’re one of those people, you might be interested to have a … Continue reading
I was a couple of minutes into the video before I stopped, blinked, and actually realised what I was watching. ‘Wait, really?’ This kind of thing has been a staple of science fiction for so long, but no this is … Continue reading
The asteroid belt may not be somewhere you’d expect to find skyscrapers or dim sum, but amusingly you will find a place called Hong Kong there. 3297 Hong Kong, to be precise — a main belt asteroid which orbits the … Continue reading
While my equipment is thermally equillibriating, I actually have time for a bite sized blog entry.* And appropriately, I’ve been meaning to write a little about a bite sized “planet”… Well… I say planet. This is Ceres, the empress of … Continue reading
The internet is quite a marvellous thing really. I mean, supposing an asteroid 530-1200m in diamater and travelling at 29 kilometres every second were to pass a mere 28 600 000 km from our planet, you’d want to know about … Continue reading
Hypothetically speaking, anyway… According to this funky little impact calculator widget, this is the size of the impact crater that would form if an iron meteor with a 15km radius hit London head on at 60km/s. Even 500km away from … Continue reading
Writing this blog is a labour of love, and one which I evidently need a little encouragement towards on occasion. If you like what I write, the best way to show your gratitude would be to fuel my caffeine addiction and buy me a coffee to say thank you. All coffee donations are gratefully accepted!
Never stop dreaming...
