Minor Planets and Huge Telescopes

Before I left for MIT (which was on the 23^rd of August), my family planned a surprise for me. One of the science competitions I went to actually named “minor planets” after all the participants. A minor planet is similar to an asteroid. If you put “amberhess” in Google it will actually come right up. http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/winners_2005.html My “minor planet” is number 21431. Here’s some more information about minor planets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_planet

There is a place called “MIRA” (Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy) near where I live. We drove up to the top of a mountain to visit the telescope they have there! It was so cool! The view was spectacular (the sunset was gorgeous), the telescope was huge, and I got to see my minor planet! I don’t have any pictures of the planet right now, but I should be getting some soon. When I do, I’ll post them!

In order to find “amberhess” we took multiple pictures using the telescope of the place we knew it should be. Since the other stars/galaxies and planets have such a larger orbit, they appear to be standing still. My asteroid orbits around the sun, and so the asteroid moves quite a bit in just a few minutes. So the bright dot that moves a bit from one picture to the next was my minor planet! Luckily there were not other asteroids in the area we photographed.

It was a very memorable experience and I thank my family and the researchers at MIRA for making it possible.