It’s no easy task to find a meteorite that’s just been seen flashing across the sky. But it helps if you have an automatic network of “eyes” on the night sky.
The early solar system was a busy place with plenty of meteorite impacts on the new planets and moons. But finding evidence of such impacts on Earth can be tricky.
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland; Donna Burton, University of Southern Queensland, and Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Meteors have been seen since people first looked at the night sky. They are comprised of small pieces of debris, typically no larger than a grain of dust or sand, which continually crash into the Earth’s…
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland; Donna Burton, University of Southern Queensland, and Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Watching meteors in the night sky can be fun, although typically you only see a few flashes an hour. But there are certain times of the year when you can see many more – events known as meteor showers…
Our interest in our near-neighbour Mars – the hope of finding life there, or of possibly colonising it in the future – has driven several orbiting missions to the planet. These produced very detailed maps…
Meteorite impacts can be very destructive. One that fell in Mexico around 66m years ago created a 180km crater and caused the extinction of dinosaurs while spewing debris and molten rock into the air…
The asteroid impact that burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on the morning of February 15 has provided a huge collection of new data that scientists have been analysing since. This week, three papers, two…