1.
Near-Earth object
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A near-Earth object is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By definition, a solar system body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun is less than 1.3 astronomical unit and it is now widely accepted that collisions in the past have had a significant role in shaping the geological and biological history of the Earth. NEOs have become of increased interest since the 1980s because of increased awareness of the potential danger some of the asteroids or comets pose, and mitigations are being researched. In January 2016, NASA announced the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to track NEOs larger than 30 to 50 meters in diameter and coordinate an effective threat response, NEAs have orbits that lie partly between 0.983 and 1.3 AU away from the Sun. When a NEA is detected it is submitted to the IAUs Minor Planet Center for cataloging, some NEAs orbits intersect that of Earths so they pose a collision danger. The United States, European Union, and other nations are currently scanning for NEOs in an effort called Spaceguard. In the United States and since 1998, NASA has a mandate to catalogue all NEOs that are at least 1 kilometer wide. In 2006, it was estimated that 20% of the objects had not yet been found. In 2011, largely as a result of NEOWISE, it was estimated that 93% of the NEAs larger than 1 km had been found, as of 5 February 2017, there have been 875 NEAs larger than 1 km discovered, of which 157 are potentially hazardous. The inventory is much less complete for smaller objects, which still have potential for scale, though not global. Potentially hazardous objects are defined based on parameters that measure the objects potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Mostly objects with an Earth minimum orbit intersection distance of 0.05 AU or less, objects that cannot approach closer to the Earth than 0.05 AU, or are smaller than about 150 m in diameter, are not considered PHOs. This makes them a target for exploration. As of 2016, three near-Earth objects have been visited by spacecraft, more recently, a typical frame of reference for looking at NEOs has been through the scientific concept of risk. In this frame, the risk that any near-Earth object poses is typically seen through a lens that is a function of both the culture and the technology of human society, NEOs have been understood differently throughout history. Each time an NEO is observed, a different risk was posed and it is not just a matter of scientific knowledge. Such perception of risk is thus a product of religious belief, philosophic principles, scientific understanding, technological capabilities, and even economical resourcefulness.03 E −0.4 megatonnes. For instance, it gives the rate for bolides of 10 megatonnes or more as 1 per thousand years, however, the authors give a rather large uncertainty, due in part to uncertainties in determining the energies of the atmospheric impacts that they used in their determination
2.
Asteroid
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Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
3.
Impact event
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An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids. Impact craters and structures are dominant landforms on many of the Solar Systems solid objects and present the strongest empirical evidence for their frequency, Impact events appear to have played a significant role in the evolution of the Solar System since its formation. Notable impact events include the Chicxulub impact,66 million years ago, throughout recorded history, hundreds of Earth impacts have been reported, with some occurrences causing deaths, injuries, property damage, or other significant localised consequences. One of the best-known recorded impacts in modern times was the Tunguska event, the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact provided the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects, when the comet broke apart and collided with Jupiter in July 1994. Impact events have been a plot and background element in science fiction, Impact structures are the result of impact events on solid objects and, as the dominant landforms on many of the Systems solid objects, present the most solid evidence of prehistoric events. Small objects frequently collide with Earth, there is an inverse relationship between the size of the object and the frequency of such events. The lunar cratering record shows that the frequency of impacts decreases as approximately the cube of the craters diameter. Asteroids with a 1 km diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years on average, large collisions – with 5 km objects – happen approximately once every twenty million years. The last known impact of an object of 10 km or more in diameter was at the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, the energy released by an impactor depends on diameter, density, velocity, and angle. The diameter of most near-Earth asteroids that have not been studied by radar or infrared can generally only be estimated within about a factor of 2 based on the asteroid brightness, the density is generally assumed because the diameter and mass are also generally estimates. The minimum impact velocity on Earth is 11 km/s with asteroid impacts averaging around 17 km/s, the most probable impact angle is 45 degrees. Stony asteroids with a diameter of 4 meters enter Earths atmosphere approximately once per year. Asteroids with a diameter of 7 meters enter the atmosphere about every 5 years with as much energy as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. These ordinarily explode in the atmosphere and most or all of the solids are vaporized. However, asteroids with a diameter of 20 m, and which strike Earth approximately twice every century, the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor was estimated to be about 20 m in diameter with an airburst of around 500 kilotons, an explosion 30 times the one over Hiroshima. Much larger objects may impact the solid earth and create a crater, objects with a diameter less than 1 m are called meteoroids and seldom make it to the ground to become meteorites. Although no human is known to have been killed directly by an impact, in 2005 it was estimated that the chance of a single person born today dying due to an impact is around 1 in 200,000
4.
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
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Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer is a NASA infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation in February 2011 when its transmitter turned off. WISE discovered thousands of planets and numerous star clusters. Its observations also supported the discovery of the first Y Dwarf, WISE performed an all-sky astronomical survey with images in 3.4,4.6,12 and 22 μm wavelength range bands, over ten months using a 40 cm diameter infrared telescope in Earth orbit. After its hydrogen coolant depleted, a mission extension called NEOWISE was conducted to search for near-Earth objects such as comets. The All-Sky data including processed images, source catalogs and raw data, was released to the public on March 14,2012, in August 2013, NASA announced it would reactivate the WISE telescope for a new three-year mission to search for asteroids that could collide with Earth. Science operations and data processing for WISE and NEOWISE take place at the Infrared Processing, the mission was planned to create infrared images of 99 percent of the sky, with at least eight images made of each position on the sky in order to increase accuracy. The spacecraft was placed in a 525 km, circular, polar, Sun-synchronous orbit for its mission, during which it has taken 1.5 million images. Each image covers a 47-arcminute field of view, which means a 6-arcsecond resolution, each area of the sky was scanned at least 10 times at the equator, the poles were scanned at theoretically every revolution due to the overlapping of the images. The produced image library contains data on the local Solar System, the Milky Way, among the objects WISE studied are asteroids, cool, dim stars such as brown dwarfs, and the most luminous infrared galaxies. Stellar nurseries, which are covered by interstellar dust, are detectable in infrared, Infrared measurements from the WISE astronomical survey have been particularly effective at unveiling previously undiscovered star clusters. Examples of such embedded star clusters are Camargo 18, Camargo 440, Majaess 101, in addition, galaxies of the young Universe and interacting galaxies, where star formation is intensive, are bright in infrared. On this wavelength the interstellar gas clouds are also detectable, as well as proto-planetary discs, WISE satellite was expected to find at least 1,000 of those proto-planetary discs. WISE was not able to detect Kuiper belt objects, because their temperatures are too low and it was able to detect any objects warmer than 70–100 K. A Neptune-sized object would be out to 700 AU, a Jupiter-mass object out to 1 light year. A larger object of 2–3 Jupiter masses would be visible at a distance of up to 7–10 light years and that translates to about 1000 new main-belt asteroids per day, and 1–3 NEOs per day. The peak of magnitude distribution for NEOs will be about 21–22 V, WISE would detect each typical Solar System object 10–12 times over about 36 hours in intervals of 3 hours. Construction of the WISE telescope was divided between Ball Aerospace & Technologies, SSG Precision Optronics, Inc, DRS and Rockwell, Lockheed Martin, and Space Dynamics Laboratory. The program was managed through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the WISE instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah
5.
Orbit
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In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet about a star or a natural satellite around a planet. Normally, orbit refers to a regularly repeating path around a body, to a close approximation, planets and satellites follow elliptical orbits, with the central mass being orbited at a focal point of the ellipse, as described by Keplers laws of planetary motion. For ease of calculation, in most situations orbital motion is adequately approximated by Newtonian Mechanics, historically, the apparent motions of the planets were described by European and Arabic philosophers using the idea of celestial spheres. This model posited the existence of perfect moving spheres or rings to which the stars and it assumed the heavens were fixed apart from the motion of the spheres, and was developed without any understanding of gravity. After the planets motions were accurately measured, theoretical mechanisms such as deferent. Originally geocentric it was modified by Copernicus to place the sun at the centre to help simplify the model, the model was further challenged during the 16th century, as comets were observed traversing the spheres. The basis for the understanding of orbits was first formulated by Johannes Kepler whose results are summarised in his three laws of planetary motion. Second, he found that the speed of each planet is not constant, as had previously been thought. Third, Kepler found a relationship between the orbital properties of all the planets orbiting the Sun. For the planets, the cubes of their distances from the Sun are proportional to the squares of their orbital periods. Jupiter and Venus, for example, are respectively about 5.2 and 0.723 AU distant from the Sun, their orbital periods respectively about 11.86 and 0.615 years. The proportionality is seen by the fact that the ratio for Jupiter,5. 23/11.862, is equal to that for Venus,0. 7233/0.6152. Idealised orbits meeting these rules are known as Kepler orbits, isaac Newton demonstrated that Keplers laws were derivable from his theory of gravitation and that, in general, the orbits of bodies subject to gravity were conic sections. Newton showed that, for a pair of bodies, the sizes are in inverse proportion to their masses. Where one body is more massive than the other, it is a convenient approximation to take the center of mass as coinciding with the center of the more massive body. Lagrange developed a new approach to Newtonian mechanics emphasizing energy more than force, in a dramatic vindication of classical mechanics, in 1846 le Verrier was able to predict the position of Neptune based on unexplained perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. This led astronomers to recognize that Newtonian mechanics did not provide the highest accuracy in understanding orbits, in relativity theory, orbits follow geodesic trajectories which are usually approximated very well by the Newtonian predictions but the differences are measurable. Essentially all the evidence that can distinguish between the theories agrees with relativity theory to within experimental measurement accuracy
6.
Mount Lemmon Observatory
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The MLO site was first developed in 1954 as Mount Lemmon Air Force Station, a radar installation of the Air Defense Command. Upon transfer to the Steward Observatory 1970, the site was converted to an infrared observatory, until 2003, a radar tower operated from Fort Huachuca was used to track launches from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The 1.52 m Steward Observatory Telescope is a Cassegrain reflector used for the Mount Lemmon Survey and it was built in the late 1960s and first installed at Catalina Station on Mount Bigelow, which is nearby in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was moved to Mt. Lemmon in 1972, and then re-housed in its current location in 1975 and its original metal primary mirror performed poorly and was replaced in 1977 with a glass mirror made of Cer-Vit. It is one of the used by students at Astronomy Camp. It discovered 2011 AG5, an asteroid which achieved 1 on the Torino Scale, a 1.52 m Dahl-Kirkham optical/near infrared telescope began operating in 1970, and is the only instrument at the Mt. Lemmon Observing Facility of the University of Minnesota. It is of the general design as the 1.5 m Steward telescope. The original metal mirror performed poorly and was replaced with a Cer-Vit mirror in 1974, the University of California, San Diego was originally a partner of UMN in operating the telescope. A1.02 m reflecting telescope of an unusual Pressman-Camichel design is used by the CSS to provide automated follow up observations of newly discovered Near-Earth Objects and it was originally located at Catalina Station and was moved to MLO in 1975. It was refurbished in 2008 and placed in a new dome in 2009 before being integrated into CSS operations, a 1.0 m robotic telescope installed in 2003 is the only instrument of the Mt. Lemmon Optical Astronomy Observatory operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. The 0.81 m Schulman Telescope is a Ritchey-Chrétien reflector built by RC Optical Systems and it is operated by the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter and is Arizonas Largest dedicated public observatory. A0.7 m reflecting telescope installed in 1963 at Catalina Station was moved to MLO in 1972, a 0.6 m Ritchey-Chrétien reflector was built by RC Optical Systems and is operated by the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter. The 0.5 m John Jamieson Telescope was donated to UA in 1999 and it is optimized for near infrared observing and is operated by the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter
7.
Palomar Observatory
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Palomar Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in San Diego County, California, United States,145 kilometers southeast of Los Angeles, California, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology located in Pasadena, research time is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Cornell University. The observatory operates several telescopes, including the famous 200-inch Hale Telescope, astronomer George Ellery Hale, whose vision created the Palomar Observatory, built the worlds largest telescope four times. He published an article in the April 1928 issue of Harpers Magazine called The Possibilities of Large Telescopes, Hale hoped that the American people would understand and support his project. Hale followed this article with a letter to the International Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation dated April 28,1928, in his letter, Hale stated, No method of advancing science is so productive as the development of new and more powerful instruments and methods of research. The 200-inch telescope is named after astronomer George Hale and it was built by Caltech with a $6 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, using a Pyrex blank manufactured by Corning Glass Works. Anderson was the project manager assigned in the early 1940s. The telescope saw first light January 26,1949 targeting NGC2261, the American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, perhaps the most important observer of the 20th century, was given the honor of being the first astronomer to use the telescope. Astronomers using the Hale Telescope have discovered distant objects at the edges of the universe called quasars and have given us the first direct evidence of stars in distant galaxies. They have studied the structure and chemistry of intergalactic clouds, leading to an understanding of the synthesis of elements in the universe, porter worked on the designs in collaboration with many engineers and Caltech committee members. The gleaming white building on Palomar Mountain that houses the 200–inch Hale Telescope is considered by many to be The Cathedral of Astronomy, the 200-inch Hale Telescope was first proposed in 1928 and has been operational since 1948. It was the largest telescope in the world for 45 years, a 60-inch reflecting telescope is located in the Oscar Mayer Building. It was dedicated in 1970 to take some of the load off of the Hale Telescope and this telescope was used to discover the first brown dwarf star. The 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope was started in 1938 and installed in 1948 and it was initially called the 48–inch Schmidt, and was dedicated to Samuel Oschin in 1986. The dwarf planet Eris was discovered using this instrument, the existence of Eris triggered the discussions in the international astronomy community that led to Pluto being re-classified as a dwarf planet. An 18-inch Schmidt camera became the first operational telescope at the Palomar in 1936, in the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky, a Caltech astronomer, discovered over 100 supernovae in other galaxies with this telescope and gathered the first evidence for dark matter. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered with this instrument in 1993 and it has since been retired and is on display at the small museum/visitor center. The Palomar Testbed Interferometer was an instrument that permitted astronomers to make very high resolution measurements of the sizes
8.
Ecliptic
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The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere, and is the basis for the ecliptic coordinate system. It also refers to the plane of this path, which is coplanar with the orbit of Earth around the Sun, the motions as described above are simplifications. Due to the movement of Earth around the Earth–Moon center of mass, due to further perturbations by the other planets of the Solar System, the Earth–Moon barycenter wobbles slightly around a mean position in a complex fashion. The ecliptic is actually the apparent path of the Sun throughout the course of a year, because Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun also takes the same length of time to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in one year, the Sun moves a little less than 1° eastward every day, again, this is a simplification, based on a hypothetical Earth that orbits at uniform speed around the Sun. The actual speed with which Earth orbits the Sun varies slightly during the year, for example, the Sun is north of the celestial equator for about 185 days of each year, and south of it for about 180 days. The variation of orbital speed accounts for part of the equation of time, if the equator is projected outward to the celestial sphere, forming the celestial equator, it crosses the ecliptic at two points known as the equinoxes. The Sun, in its apparent motion along the ecliptic, crosses the equator at these points, one from south to north. The crossing from south to north is known as the equinox, also known as the first point of Aries. The crossing from north to south is the equinox or descending node. Likewise, the ecliptic itself is not fixed, the gravitational perturbations of the other bodies of the Solar System cause a much smaller motion of the plane of Earths orbit, and hence of the ecliptic, known as planetary precession. The combined action of two motions is called general precession, and changes the position of the equinoxes by about 50 arc seconds per year. Once again, this is a simplification, periodic motions of the Moon and apparent periodic motions of the Sun cause short-term small-amplitude periodic oscillations of Earths axis, and hence the celestial equator, known as nutation. Obliquity of the ecliptic is the used by astronomers for the inclination of Earths equator with respect to the ecliptic. It is about 23. 4° and is currently decreasing 0.013 degrees per hundred years due to planetary perturbations, the angular value of the obliquity is found by observation of the motions of Earth and other planets over many years. From 1984, the Jet Propulsion Laboratorys DE series of computer-generated ephemerides took over as the ephemeris of the Astronomical Almanac. Obliquity based on DE200, which analyzed observations from 1911 to 1979, was calculated, jPLs fundamental ephemerides have been continually updated. J. Laskar computed an expression to order T10 good to 0″. 04/1000 years over 10,000 years, all of these expressions are for the mean obliquity, that is, without the nutation of the equator included
9.
Potentially hazardous object
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A potentially hazardous object can be known not to be a threat to Earth for the next 100 years or more, if its orbit is reasonably well determined. Potentially hazardous asteroids with some threat of impacting Earth in the next 100 years are listed on the Sentry Risk Table, as of March 2017 there are 1,786 known potentially hazardous asteroids and only 205 have an observation arc shorter than 30 days. Of the known PHAs,157 are believed to be larger than one kilometer in diameter, a calculated diameter is only a rough estimate, as it is inferred from the objects varying brightness—observed and measured at various times—and the assumed, yet unknown reflectivity of its surface. Most of the discovered PHAs are Apollo asteroids and fewer belong to the group of Aten asteroids, after several astronomical surveys, the number of known PHAs has increased tenfold since the end of the 1990s. These surveys have led to a number of 15,802 discovered near-Earth objects. Most of them are asteroids, with just some 106 near-Earth comets, the Minor Planet Centers website Unusual Minor Planets also publishes detailed statistics for these objects. This is big enough to cause devastation to human settlements unprecedented in human history in the case of a land impact. Such impact events occur on average once per 10,000 years. NEOWISE data estimates that there are 4,700 ±1,500 potentially hazardous asteroids with a greater than 100 meters. As of 2012, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of these objects have been found, Asteroids larger than 35 meters across can pose a threat to a town or city. The diameter of most small asteroids is not well determined and can only be estimated based on their brightness, for this reason NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory use the more practical measure of absolute magnitude. Any asteroid with a magnitude of 22. The NASA near-Earth object program uses an assumed albedo of 0.13 for this purpose, in May 2016, the asteroid size estimates arising from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and NEOWISE missions have been questioned, but the criticism has yet to undergo peer review. Several astronomical survey projects such as Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research and Catalina Sky Survey continue to search for more PHOs, both professional and amateur astronomers participate in such monitoring. This is a reflection of the character of the Solar System. The two main scales used to categorize the impact hazards of asteroids are the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale, the lowest numbered PHA is 1566 Icarus. The largest known Potentially hazardous asteroid is 1999 JM8 with a diameter of ~7 km, below is listed the largest PHA discovered in a given year. Historical data of the number of discovered PHA since 1999 are displayed in the bar charts—one for the total number
10.
Astronomical unit
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The astronomical unit is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun. However, that varies as Earth orbits the Sun, from a maximum to a minimum. Originally conceived as the average of Earths aphelion and perihelion, it is now defined as exactly 149597870700 metres, the astronomical unit is used primarily as a convenient yardstick for measuring distances within the Solar System or around other stars. However, it is also a component in the definition of another unit of astronomical length. A variety of symbols and abbreviations have been in use for the astronomical unit. In a 1976 resolution, the International Astronomical Union used the symbol A for the astronomical unit, in 2006, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures recommended ua as the symbol for the unit. In 2012, the IAU, noting that various symbols are presently in use for the astronomical unit, in the 2014 revision of the SI Brochure, the BIPM used the unit symbol au. In ISO 80000-3, the symbol of the unit is ua. Earths orbit around the Sun is an ellipse, the semi-major axis of this ellipse is defined to be half of the straight line segment that joins the aphelion and perihelion. The centre of the sun lies on this line segment. In addition, it mapped out exactly the largest straight-line distance that Earth traverses over the course of a year, knowing Earths shift and a stars shift enabled the stars distance to be calculated. But all measurements are subject to some degree of error or uncertainty, improvements in precision have always been a key to improving astronomical understanding. Improving measurements were continually checked and cross-checked by means of our understanding of the laws of celestial mechanics, the expected positions and distances of objects at an established time are calculated from these laws, and assembled into a collection of data called an ephemeris. NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides one of several ephemeris computation services, in 1976, in order to establish a yet more precise measure for the astronomical unit, the IAU formally adopted a new definition. Equivalently, by definition, one AU is the radius of an unperturbed circular Newtonian orbit about the sun of a particle having infinitesimal mass. As with all measurements, these rely on measuring the time taken for photons to be reflected from an object. However, for precision the calculations require adjustment for such as the motions of the probe. In addition, the measurement of the time itself must be translated to a scale that accounts for relativistic time dilation
11.
Albedo
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Albedo is a measure for reflectance or optical brightness. It is dimensionless and measured on a scale from zero to one, surface albedo is defined as the ratio of radiation reflected to the radiation incident on a surface. The proportion reflected is not only determined by properties of the surface itself and these factors vary with atmospheric composition, geographic location and time. While bi-hemispherical reflectance is calculated for an angle of incidence. The temporal resolution may range from seconds to daily, seasonal or annual averages, unless given for a specific wavelength, albedo refers to the entire spectrum of solar radiation. Due to measurement constraints, it is given for the spectrum in which most solar energy reaches the surface. This spectrum includes visible light, which explains why surfaces with a low albedo appear dark, albedo is an important concept in climatology, astronomy, and environmental management. The term albedo was introduced into optics by Johann Heinrich Lambert in his 1760 work Photometria, any albedo in visible light falls within a range of about 0.9 for fresh snow to about 0.04 for charcoal, one of the darkest substances. Deeply shadowed cavities can achieve an effective albedo approaching the zero of a black body, when seen from a distance, the ocean surface has a low albedo, as do most forests, whereas desert areas have some of the highest albedos among landforms. Most land areas are in a range of 0.1 to 0.4. The average albedo of Earth is about 0.3 and this is far higher than for the ocean primarily because of the contribution of clouds. Earths surface albedo is regularly estimated via Earth observation satellite sensors such as NASAs MODIS instruments on board the Terra, thereby, the BRDF allows to translate observations of reflectance into albedo. Earths average surface temperature due to its albedo and the effect is currently about 15 °C. If Earth were frozen entirely, the temperature of the planet would drop below −40 °C. If only the land masses became covered by glaciers, the mean temperature of the planet would drop to about 0 °C. In contrast, if the entire Earth was covered by water — a so-called aquaplanet — the average temperature on the planet would rise to almost 27 °C, hence, the actual albedo α can then be given as, α = α ¯ + D α ¯ ¯. Directional-hemispherical reflectance is sometimes referred to as black-sky albedo and bi-hemispherical reflectance as white-sky albedo and these terms are important because they allow the albedo to be calculated for any given illumination conditions from a knowledge of the intrinsic properties of the surface. The albedos of planets, satellites and asteroids can be used to infer much about their properties, the study of albedos, their dependence on wavelength, lighting angle, and variation in time comprises a major part of the astronomical field of photometry
12.
Amor asteroid
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The Amor asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after the asteroid 1221 Amor. They approach the orbit of Earth from beyond, but do not cross it, most Amors cross the orbit of Mars. The two moons of Mars, Deimos and Phobos, may be Amor asteroids that were captured by Marss gravity, the most famous member of this group is 433 Eros, which was the first asteroid to be orbited and then landed upon by a human probe. There are three general criteria which an asteroid must meet to be considered a member of the Amor asteroid class, to be considered near, the asteroid must come closer to Earth than to any other major planet. The closest planet to Earth is Venus, which can come as close as 0.27 AU, therefore, an Amor asteroid must come within 0.30 AU of Earths orbit. The asteroids orbit must be outside the orbit of Earth, asteroids that come close to Earth whose orbits are inside Earths orbit are considered Apohele asteroids. The asteroids orbit must not cross Earths orbit, the most commonly used definition of this is that it never orbits closer to the Sun than Earths average distance from the Sun. A more strict definition is that at any point along the asteroids orbit and this takes into consideration the fact that Earths orbit ranges between 0.983 and 1.016 AU from the Sun. It is more difficult to sort out the Amor asteroids from the non-Amor asteroids using this definition, however. These three criteria boil down to a single test for membership, If an asteroid has a perihelion between 1.000 AU and 1.300 AU, it is an Amor asteroid. Any asteroid with this trait is considered an Amor-class asteroid, regardless of its axis, eccentricity, aphelion, inclination, physical properties, orbital stability. An asteroid belongs to the Amor group if, Its orbital period is greater than one year and this is equivalent to saying that its semi-major axis is greater than 1.0 AU. Its orbit does not cross Earths orbit and that is, its lowest point is higher than Earths highest point. It is an object, that is, its perihelion distance q <1.3 AU. In summary, a >1.0 AU and 1.017 AU < q <1.3 AU, there are 6051 Amor asteroids currently known. 960 of them are numbered, and 73 of them are named, Amor asteroids can be partitioned into four subgroups, depending on their average distance from the Sun. The Amor I subgroup consists of Amor asteroids whose semi-major axes are in between Earth and Mars and that is, they have a semi-major axis between 1.000 and 1.523 AU. Less than one fifth of Amor asteroids belong to this subgroup, Amor I asteroids have lower eccentricities than the other subgroups of Amors
. Bibcode:2015ApJ...814..117N. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/814/2/117. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
