NASA releases Hubble image of Asteriod 1Ceres

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:18:48 GMT, "Mike Thomas" wrote:

Why don't they get their act together and send a craft there. Ceres has
been
around since the 60's at least in the
the anals of solar system astronomy. They screw around with comets and
such
but they don't send anything to the largest asteroid
known!! I remember seeing a representation of the size of ceres as a kid
in
the 60's and immediately was amazed by it.

While I'm all for sending missions to every interesting body in the
Solar System, I would hardly characterize missions to comets as
"screwing around". Arguably we have much more to learn from comets than
we do from asteroids. We already have asteroidal material, and we are
pretty sure that their formation mechanisms are not unlike the
terrestrial planets. Comets, on the other hand, have the potential of
providing information about the formation of the Solar System that can't
be obtained from any other source.


For a supposed "astromonomer" you sure have a horse blinder attitude

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:36:08 GMT, "Mike Thomas" wrote:

For a supposed "astromonomer" you sure have a horse blinder attitude

For a supposed... well, something... you sure have an inarticulate way
of expressing yourself.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:36:08 GMT, "Mike Thomas" wrote:

For a supposed "astromonomer" you sure have a horse blinder attitude

For a supposed... well, something... you sure have an inarticulate way
of expressing yourself.

_________________________________________________



lol

Mike Thomas wrote:
Why don't they get their act together and send a craft there. Ceres has been
around since the 60's at least in the
the anals of solar system astronomy. They screw around with comets and such
but they don't send anything to the largest asteroid
known!! I remember seeing a representation of the size of ceres as a kid in
the 60's and immediately was amazed by it.

You mean something like the Dawn mission seen here at
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/? The launch is June, 2006; long stop-over at
Vesta starting in Oct, 2011 and finally getting to Ceres in 2015. So in
10 years, assuming everything works and there are no schedule slips, we
will get close-up images of Ceres. But in only 6 years, we will get
close-ups of Vesta which will likely prove of greater scientific
interest than Ceres.

Before you ask why 10 years to get there, remember that neither Vesta
nor Ceres have atmospheres you can use for braking as is now done for
Mars orbiter missions. The probe must carry all the fuel needed to match
the asteroid's orbital velocity. So you plan for a slow transfer orbit,
in this case, using solar electric propulsion (ion engine powered by
solar panels).

Alan F

In article Ik7Ve.225436$9A2.2696@edtnps89,
Mike Thomas wrote:

"Matthew Ota" wrote in message
roups.com...
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/image...ature_404.html

I always had a hunch that this World Ceres would be shaped like a
baseball....



Why don't they get their act together and send a craft there.

Dawn is being launched next year; Ceres and Vesta orbiter (arrives
Vesta 2011, Ceres 2015; a little lethargic since it's using an ion
drive).

I'm a little surprised that Hubble imagery of Ceres has taken this
long to turn up; someone tried imaging it with HST in ultra-violet
several years back, but when I picked up the images from the Hubble
archive they turned out to be of unusable quality -- over-exposed, if
I remember right. Vesta's been imaged with adaptive optics as early
as 1993, Ceres in 2004, but the HST results are a lot better since
they can work at lower wavelengths and get better resolution.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1388.pdf has the pictures,
but they're very bad compared with the Hubble ones; the claim is that
it's a low-contrast object in the infra-red L band, possibly because
they didn't come close to resolving the bright spot that showed up
in the more recent imagery.

Rosetta is apparently heading to its comet by way of asteroid 21
Lutetia, which is an M-type; it will be very interesting, in July
2010, to see whether it's in fact a hundred-kilometre chunk of iron.

Mike Thomas wrote:

Why don't they get their act together and send a craft there. Ceres has been
around since the 60's at least in the
the anals of solar system astronomy. They screw around with comets and such
but they don't send anything to the largest asteroid
known!! I remember seeing a representation of the size of ceres as a kid in
the 60's and immediately was amazed by it.

"They" haven't been exactly slack on asteroids...

NEAR landed on Eros awhile back.

The Japanese have a lander - sample return mission at the asteroid
Itokawa right now, dong research and prepping to land:
http://www.jaxa.jp/missions/projects/sat/exploration/muses_c/index_e.html