January 7, 2014

Image Caption: In this artist's rendering, the newly-identified binary asteroid 3905 Doppler approaches an eclipse as the larger asteroid begins to pass in front of the smaller one, as seen from a vantage point on Earth. Credit: Illustration by Loretta Kuo

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

An undergraduate astronomy class for non-astronomy majors at the University of Maryland has made a rare discovery that was completely overlooked by professional scientists: a pair of asteroids that orbit and regularly eclipse each other located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

There are currently fewer than 100 known eclipsing binary asteroids and the students discovery will be presented on Tuesday at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Md.

Actually contributing to the scientific community and seeing established scientists getting legitimately excited about our findings is a very good feeling, said Terence Basile, a cell biology major at from Beltsville, Md.

This is a fantastic discovery, said Drake Deming, a University of Maryland astronomer who was not involved with the class. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to learn about the physical properties and orbital evolution of these objects.

The dual asteroids, collectively known as 3905 Doppler, are just one object from hundreds of thousands in our solar systems main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The object was first discovered in 1984, but given little thought over the following decades. In September 2013, students in Dr. Melissa Hayes-Gehrkes astronomy class picked it and two other asteroids to observe because they were easy to see in the autumn sky and somewhat mysterious.

Over the course of four nights in October, four-person student teams tracked and photographed the asteroids with a privately-owned telescope in Nerpio, Spain, which was controlled remotely over the Internet. The main goal of the assignment was to capture changes in the brightness of each asteroids reflected light.

These images were then used to create a light curve, or graph of an objects light intensity over time. Changes in brightness are often the result of the objects shape, with asymmetrical objects having a range of brightness and symmetrical objects producing a constant intensity. After finding the time between maximum light intensities, scientists can determine how fast an asymmetrical object is rotating.

See the article here:

College Students Discover Rare Binary Asteroid