If anyone on the South Island has >20 cm telescopes that could be driven to a particular stretch of road south of Dunedin; the asteroids #Didymos and #Dimorphos will apparently run in front of a star as seen from there on 2024 May 5 - https://lagrange.oca.eu/fr/blog .
Not much notice; but maybe someone is already planning something?
Asteroid behaving unexpectedly after Nasa's deliberate Dart crash
"However, using their school telescope, a team of children and their teacher Jonathan Swift at Thacher School in California have found that more than a month after the collision, Dimorphos' orbit continuously slowed after impact... which is unusual and unexpected."
When NASA crashed its DART spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos, the goal was to shorten the space rock's orbit around its parent asteroid. The mission succeeded - but Dimorphos' orbit has continued to shrink and it isn't clear why
🛰️☄️ La mission ESA #HERA prend forme : le module de propulsion a été couplé au module central chez OHB en Allemagne. #HeraMission va observer les effets de l’impact de #DARTMission sur l’astéroïde #Dimorphos. Décollage prévu en octobre 2024.
Article à venir sur le blog !
Astronomers using #Hubble have discovered a swarm of boulders were shaken off the asteroid #Dimorphos when NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor probe into the asteroid as a test of asteroid deflection in 2022: https://bit.ly/3pTqLw5
@spacetelescope This is cool, and makes sense. We think of asteroids as big rocks, but in reality they are more like amalgamations of rubble and pebbles, held together by their own micro-gravity. When DART slammed into #Dimorphos the resulting collision must have sent the rubble flying, which in many cases was enough to reach escape velocity.
Asteroid hit by NASA spacecraft is behaving unexpectedly (archive.ph)
When NASA crashed its DART spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos, the goal was to shorten the space rock's orbit around its parent asteroid. The mission succeeded - but Dimorphos' orbit has continued to shrink and it isn't clear why