Venus

Mars

° Sfasu
Minor Planet Sfasu

Between Love and War

 

If you are out and about in the early morning hours this week, you might see what many call the “Morning Star.”  It is the brightest thing in the sky in the east just before sunrise.  Astronomy students at SFA learn that the Morning Star is not a star at all.  Instead it is the planet Venus bathed in intense sunlight.

 

Venus (Greek: Aphrodite) is the goddess of love and beauty. The planet is so named probably because it was the brightest of the planets known to the ancients.  Mars glimmers weakly in early dawn. Look for it below Venus and a bit to the left.   Mars (Greek: Ares) is the god of War. The planet probably got this name due to its red color.

 

Between Mars and Venus this week there is a small worldlet much further out in the solar system.  It is so far from us that it can only been seen with a large telescope equipped with a cooled digital camera. 

 

Five years ago on a clear October night SFA graduate student Michael Johnson was wrapping up the Astronomy 105 night lab at the SFA Observatory while Dr. Dan Bruton was taking a few digital images of the sky using an 18” diameter telescope.  Analysis of the images revealed a moving object wandering through the background stars.  These observations were submitted to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who gave the object a temporary designation of 1999 TJ17.  The astronomers were given credit for discovering a minor planet, also known as an asteroid, tumbling between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. 

 

With help from astronomers around the world, enough data have been collected over the years to allow astronomers to know precisely where it has been and where it is going.   Early in 2004, SFA astronomers submitted the name "Sfasu" (pronounced Sfä - sü) to the thirteen-person international Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union.  This week the proposed name was officially accepted. 

 

The minor planet Sfasu is estimated to be about 3 miles in diameter and is currently about 260,000,000 miles from Earth.  We will not know what the surface of this asteroid looks like for some time.  Perhaps one day in the distant future astronomy classes can be held on Sfasu.

 

Additional Information

 

Sfasu is probably a cratered worldlet much like Phobos - one of the two captured moons of Mars.  Last week the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft capture the high-resolution picture of Phobos shown to the right.  http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM21TVJD1E_0.html

 

This discovery of Sfasu was a result of a deliberate search for minor planets between Mars and Jupiter.  This research project was supported by an SFA Faculty Research Grant.  The SFA Observatory (Minor Planet Center Code 740) is part of a campaign to search for asteroids.   The asteroid was discovered using an 18-inch diameter telescope that was originally used by NASA for lunar studies prior to the Apollo program.   This telescope has been in operation at SFA since 1976.  Michael Johnson graduated from SFA in 2003.  Dr. Dan Bruton is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at SFA.  The observatory director Dr. Norman Markworth developed the telescope and camera control software.  For more information visit the SFA Observatory web site.   http://observatory.sfasu.edu/  

 

“SFASU the university has had a big impact on my life.  Sfasu the asteroid will not have a big impact on Earth.”  -- Dr. Dan Bruton

 

 

 

 

 

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