When
Where
Dr. Michael Nolan
Deputy Director for Planetary Sciences
Arecibo Observatory
The Diverse Population of Near-Earth Asteroids
Since the "Gregorian upgrade" of the Arecibo telescope about 15 years ago, we have observed several hundred near-Earth asteroids, with detailed (decameter-scale) images of about 100. The initial results on 1998 ML14 and 1999 JM8 confirmed our understanding of these bodies as cratered "space potatoes". However, over the following years we realized that that these objects were actually less common than more "unusual" (that is, not matching our intuition) shapes. We are still exploring the parameter space, and discovering new kinds of objects.
Host: Dr. Richard Greenberg
Relevant papers by colloquium speaker:
Shape model and surface properties of the OSIRIS-REx target Asteroid (101955) Bennu from radar and lightcurve observations