Cybersurf: Sedna and the Near Earth Object Program
22 March 04


Hello good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – a weekly window on the world wide web – I am your Cyberhost Steven Lang. In today’s program, there are quite a few web addresses that you might miss, so I am going to post this script onto my personal blog at www.stevenlang.blogspot.com.

In the last week astronomers have made two very exciting announcements about two unique bodies in our solar system.

The first one concerned a planetoid orbiting our sun in the far reaches of the Kuiper belt. There has been some debate about whether it is a very tiny planet or a rather large asteroid – the interim compromise is to describe it as a planetoid. This recent discovery – known as Sedna – is thought to be about three quarters the size of Pluto – and is the largest body discovered in our solar system since Pluto itself was found.

To find out more about Sedna, you can go to www.jpl.nasa.gov and click on the “releases” section, - the JPL site has some very good pictures and an interesting graphic showing the relative sizes of Sedna, Pluto and earth.

You would also do well to look at the Spitzer telescope site which can be found at www.spitzer.caltech.edu – let me spell spitzer – S.P.I.T.Z.E.R dot Caltech dot edu – The spitzer site is fantastic and if you go to the official press release and scroll down to the bottom of the page, there is a link which will take you to Mike Brown’s Sedna page.

You will find out that Sedna, an Inuit goddess of the oceans was known for her saucy background with a some kinky sexual encounters - so I wouldn’t be surprised if the powers that be of astronomy actually change the name of the planetoid.

Still in space . . . . but this time with a piece of flying rock much closer to home – in fact far too close for comfort if you ask me. If Sedna is the furthest piece of the solar system we have found, then asteroid 2004 FH was certainly the closest.

The thirty metre wide asteroid passed a mere forty three thousand kilometres above the Atlantic ocean on the night of March 18. It was so close that it was visible with a good pair of binoculars.

To find out more about 2004 FH and other asteroids that could hit our planet, you should visit the Near Earth Object Program web site at the following address: neo.jpl.nasa.gov – that is neo.jpl.nasa.gov – the neo of course stands for near earth object.

It is a very informative site giving you facts and figures about efforts to track asteroids and meteors that could hit our planet.

There is an interesting little animated graphic showing a series of pictures taken of the 2004 fh moving through the sky. Because the asteroid is kept at the centre of the frame – it looks like a static, tiny fleck of dust in the middle of an array of other moving flecks of dust. Well worth the visit.

Remember if you have missed anyf of the web site addresses I have read out in today’s program – you will find the full script, together with the addresses at www.stevenlang.blogspot.com – here it goes one more time: www.stevenlang.blogspot.com – and that wraps up the space discoveries edition of Cybersurf – thanks for listening and don’t forget to tune in again next week for more on the best of the web.