|
An Asteroid Zips By At first glance this small, elongated object, apparently lurking in the Lagoon Nebula, and coloured red, green and blue, seems out of place, looking more like an odd spaceship than a really distant astronomical object. And, indeed, it turns out that this peculiar, multicoloured interloper is simply an asteroid that happened to cross the sky while the image was being taken. Called 4675 Ohboke, this small, rocky Solar System object was at a distance of roughly 1.2 AU ― that is 1.2 times the Earth–Sun distance of about 150 million kilometres ― from us and 2.1 AU from the Sun at the time of the observation. Discovered in 1990, 4675 Ohboke resides in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and accomplishes one orbit the Sun in almost four years. This image was taken using three different colour filters (red, blue and green), which gives the asteroid its many-hued appearance, as it moved while the individual images were taken. There is another, fainter asteroid in the main image of the Lagoon Nebula. Can you find it?
View file segment |
|
|