Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.<\/p>\n
Good morning. It is November 3, and today we have a treat from NASA. A couple of days ago I wrote about NASA\u2019s Lucy mission preparing to fly by its first asteroid target, the small main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh. Now, it is complete.<\/p>\n
This flyby was not so much about the science but rather proving the capability of the spacecraft to point its instruments and take data while whizzing by an asteroid. In this case, Lucy zoomed by Dinkinesh at a speed of 10,000 mph (4,470 meters per second). And, as can be seen from the first images returned by Lucy, the spacecraft succeeded.<\/p>\n
In fact, the spacecraft surprised astronomers by revealing that Dinkinesh is not a single asteroid but rather a binary pair. From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, according to NASA, the team estimates that the larger body is approximately 0.5 miles (790 m) at its widest, while the smaller is about 0.15 miles (220 m) in size.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew this was going to be the smallest main-belt asteroid ever seen up close,\u201d said Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist from NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cThe fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have a great weekend, everyone, even if it probably won\u2019t be as great as the Lucy mission scientists\u2019 as they continue to downlink data from the asteroid encounter.<\/p>\n
Source: NASA.<\/p>\n
Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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