100.000 αστεροειδείς σε ένα βίντεο, An Incredible Visualization of Asteroids from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Στο βίντεο που ακολουθεί βλέπουμε πάνω από 100000 αστεροειδείς και τα χρώματά τους. Πρόκειται για ένα animation που δείχνει τις τροχιακές κινήσεις των αστεροειδών με τα σχετικά τους μεγέθη που παρατηρήθηκαν από το τηλεσκόπιο Sloan Digital Sky (SDSS):

Who knew asteroids could be so beautiful and mesmerizing? In 2008, a group of astronomers led by Alex Parker did a study of the size distribution of asteroid families using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. 

llustration from Parker et al, 2008, of the decomposition of the main-belt asteroid population into families and background objects in proper a vs. sin(i) (left panels) and proper a vs. e (right panels). The top panels show all (background and family) objects in the data subset. The two middle panels show objects from 37 identified families, and the bottom two panels show the background population. Credit: Parker et al, 2008.

Asteroid families often have distinctive optical colors, the team said, and they were able to offer an improved way to separate out the family members into their colors. This resultant animation put together just this week by Parker shows the orbital motions of over 100,000 asteroids, with colors illustrating the compositional diversity and relative sizes of the asteroids.