United States or Cayman Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the evening of March 29, 1807, the diligence of Olbers was rewarded with the discovery of the fourth of the group, which like its predecessors, was so small and irregular in character as still further to favor the fragmentary theory. How shall we name the asteroids? Piazzi fell back upon pagan mythology for the name of his little world, and called it Ceres, from the Roman goddess of corn.
For all its beauty, the Map had a very useful purpose ... the registry and identification of asteroid claims among the miners of Mars. Each asteroid registered as a claim showed up as a red pinpoint; unclaimed asteroids were white. But even with the advances of modern astronomy only a small percentage of the existing asteroids were on the map, for the vast majority had never been plotted.
LIEUT. MAURY says that the new planet, Parthenope, discovered by M. Gasparis, of Naples, has been observed at Washington, by Mr. J. Ferguson. It resembles a star of the tenth magnitude. This is the eleventh in the family of asteroids, and the seventh within the last five years. GEORGE WILKINS KENDALL is now in New York, having visited New Orleans since his return from Paris.
It would perform two or three circuits to his one, five to his two, nine to his five, and so on. Kirkwood's inference was that the gaps in question were cleared of asteroids by the attractive influence of Jupiter.
Nothing abideth; the river of yesterday floweth not to-day; the sun's rising is a setting; living is dying; the very mountains melt; and all revolve: systems and asteroids; the sun wheels through the zodiac, and the zodiac is a revolution. Ah gods! in all this universal stir, am I to prove one stable thing? "Grim chiefs in skeletons, avaunt!
In addition, so many new asteroids have been added to those which were already known to circulate in the place which theoretically should be occupied by a planet, between Mars and Jupiter, that their number now amounts to between two and three hundred. I have already alluded to the extension of our knowledge of the nature of the heavenly bodies by the employment of spectroscopy.
This fact had been shown quite conclusively by the enormous deflections that had at last swung it round squarely at our world. It had passed near three of the smallest asteroids without producing the minutest perceptible deflection in their course; while, on its own part, it had described a course through nearly three degrees.
But if we admit that the substance of which the solar system consists once existed in a nebulous condition, and was in rotation, all the above peculiarities follow as necessary mechanical consequences. Nay, more, the formation of planets, the formation of satellites and of asteroids, is accounted for.
For almost a hundred and fifty years ... since the earliest days of space exploration ... there had been miners prospecting in the Asteroids. Out there, beyond the orbit of Mars and inside the orbit of Jupiter, were a hundred thousand ... maybe a hundred million, for all anybody knew ... chunks of rock, metal and debris, spinning in silent orbit around the sun.
The latter bodies have been chained down to regular orbits, followed far beyond those of the old planets, and brought into genealogical relations with these through the links of bolides and asteroids. The family circle of planets proper has been immensely increased, a new visitant to the central fire appearing every few years or even months.
Word Of The Day