An international team of astronomers observed 2020 XL5 and confirmed it is an Earth Trojan asteroid orbiting the sun along the same path as Earth. 2020 XL5 is the second, and larger, Earth Trojan asteroid discovered. The team of U.S. National Science Foundation researchers used images of the sky’s horizon at daybreak, captured by the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope […]
When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into the planet 66 million years ago, the impact set wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it blocked the sun, which caused the global cooling that ultimately doomed our giant predecessors. That’s the scenario scientists have hypothesized. Now, a new […]
This GIF shows the flash of an asteroid impacting Earth’s atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea on June 22, 2019. It was captured by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument aboard GOES-16, an Earth-monitoring satellite operated by NOAA and NASA. CIRA/CSU, RAMMB/NOAA/NASA › Larger view When a lightning detector on a NOAA weather satellite detected something […]
The December 2018 close approach by the large, near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 has provided astronomers an outstanding opportunity to obtain detailed radar images of the surface and shape of the object and to improve the understanding of its orbit. The asteroid will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of about […]