An out-of-this-world record for Faulkes Telescope South (Forwarded)

Faulkes Telescope Project
Cardiff, U.K.

28 May 2008

An out-of-this-world record for FTS!

A British amateur astronomer has discovered the fastest rotating natural
object known in our Solar System, using data from FT South.

His observations, made using a telescope normally shared by school students
and professional scientists as part of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global
Telescope Network (LCOGTN), have proved that the newly-discovered asteroid,
2008 HJ is revolving once every 42.7 seconds, classifying it is as a
'superfast rotator'. His discovery will boost our sparse knowledge of near
Earth asteroids and is another successful find for the Faulkes Telescope
near-Earth asteroid project.

The folded lightcurve of 2008 HJ

The astronomer Richard Miles made his exciting discovery on Tuesday 29th
April using the Faulkes Telescope South (located at Siding Spring,
Australia), which he operated remotely via the Internet from his home in
Dorset. Confirmation of his discovery was formally announced by the
International Astronomical Union on Thursday 22nd May. The previous record
holder was asteroid 2000 DO8, discovered eight years ago and found to rotate
once every 78 seconds. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
was involved in the initial set-up of the Faulkes Telescope Project and
continues to provide support.

This latest discovery is the most recent outcome of a new project to use the
Faulkes Telescopes, situated in Hawaii and Australia, to survey the
properties of small (150-metre) near-Earth asteroids. UK schools and
colleges have already participated in the project, which in April had an
early success having found that asteroid 2008 GP3 rotates once every 11.8
minutes. Asteroid 2008 HJ was only the fourth object observed as part of
this study.

The observations suggest that 2008 HJ is a compact stony object some 12m x
24m in size, smaller than a tennis court yet probably having a mass in
excess of 5,000 tonnes. It was moving at almost 45 kilometres per second
(more than 100,000 mph) when it hurtled past the Earth in late April.
Despite being classified as a "near-Earth asteroid", it came no closer than
1 million km and never posed a threat to our planet.

Dr Paul Roche, the director of the Faulkes Telescope Project at Cardiff
University, said: "A discovery like this demonstrates the capabilities of
amateur astronomers and school students to produce exciting scientific
results if given the right tools. By providing Richard with access to a big
telescope we have smashed the previous record, and opened up the search for
even faster objects to UK amateur astronomers and school students. This
helps to put all that classroom science, maths and IT to real use!"

The early success for the Faulkes Telescope near-Earth asteroid project
bodes well for the future and should prove especially encouraging to
schools, colleges and other amateur astronomers looking to participate. It
now appears that the chances of success are high and one challenge will be
to find objects spinning even faster than 2008 HJ. Cooperation between all
the observing groups, whether they are astronomers or schools students, will
be essential if asteroid rotation rates are to be accurately identified.

Dr Petr Pravec, an astronomer at the Ondrejov Observatory (Czech Republic)
and an expert in this field, commented: "A period of 42.7 seconds for an
asteroid with a size of about 20 meters is perfectly consistent with theory
there may be a significant population of asteroids measuring up to a few
tens of metres across, rotating in less than a minute, that have not been
observed until now".

Our knowledge of the near-Earth population of small asteroids is very
sparse, so schools and others can contribute directly to our understanding
of these nearest neighbours of ours. It is believed that most of these
objects are probably fragments ejected from collisions between larger bodies
which took place some time in the distant past. However, other objects may
have originated when the solar nebula was formed over 4.6 billion years ago.

The 2-metre FT South is part of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope
Network, and the Faulkes Telescope Project is the educational partner of
LCOGTN in the UK.

[NOTE: An image supporting this release is available at
http://faulkes-telescope.com/files/f...lightcurve.jpg
(658KB)]