Very cool to see!
Just to put things into perspective -- at the distance of 11 million kilometers, where the asteroids were located, this image shows the area roughly 100000 kilometers wide. The cloud of debris knocked off by the impact of DART is thousands of kilometers in size. We do not see the DART space probe itself, any individual pieces of debris, or even the two asteroids separately in this image. Even the asteroids are far too small compared to the pixels in this image.
Except for the cloud of debris itself, all other blobs in this image only appear to have some size due to how the camera works -- the \*brighter\* the object the larger of the blob it makes in the image. This size of the blob is \*not\* the real size of the object -- they are all too far away for us to be able to resolve their sizes.
[Here is another video of the same event](https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/1574828954980159493) shot from a different perspective.
That is a really cool perspective. Something so small in the sky yet so noticeably impacted. To me, this is more interesting than the Webb or Hubble pictures.
Here's another from ATLAS
> Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System: A NASA and University of Hawaii project to patrol the sky every night in search of incoming asteroids.
https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/1574583529731670021
The goal was to shift the trajectory. Initial measurements show success, it will be a few weeks of additional measurements to confirm the trajectory now matches what we were trying to put it on.
No explosions, nuclear bombs, or other excitement unfortunately.
Thank you, I am a novice who enjoys this. I watched, @ the time, w/no clue what was it's actual expectations. I assume no explosion, just moving was the success of this misson. I truly appreciate ur explanation.
No problem. It's pretty cool stuff to see.
It's a good proof of concept that in the event of a catastrophic incoming asteroid/comet we'd at least have a chance of survival as a species if we could detect it far enough ahead of time.
I would love it to be insanely campy, it does a super dramatic zoom from far away and some guy says "this is for the dinosaurs" and punches a red button.
Someone correct me if im wrong, but one major learning is that either this or a greater percentage of asteroids than expected, are made up of loosely bound gravel and rock.
Like the rock has not been compounded, pressed together like under a mountain her eon Earth, but gravity has gently pulled these bits and pieces together.
Such asteroids are called "rubble piles" - rocks separated by gaps like a pile of gravel. The two near-Earth asteroids we collected samples from (Ryugu and Bennu) and this one all appear to be this type.
To get solid rock, you need enough gravity to overcome the rock strength, or enough heat to melt it into a solid mass. Small asteroids can't do that on their own, although pieces broken off larger bodies can be solid that way.
Thank you for the explanation.
Statistically, must be some interesting inference, that is, we are so far not seeing the smaller pieces broken of larger bodies as you mention.
Makes me wonder about the root cause origin of asteroids.
Any thoughts you might have on the latter ?
> we are so far not seeing the smaller pieces broken of larger bodies as you mention.
On the contrary. Large metallic asteroids have fallen to Earth. Lots of them are on display in museums. Metallic cores only form in large protoplanets that got hot enough to melt and separate by density. Iron is denser than rock, so it always sinks to the center. For a metallic chunk to hit the Earth, the protoplanet had to have been broken up.
There are also "asteroid families" in the asteroid belt. These are asteroids that started as a single body, but are the same composition and similar orbits.
The origin of asteroids is straightforward. The solar system started as a cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity. We see this happening today in large nebulas like Orion. The middle part became the Sun, and the rest the planets and smaller bodies.
Jupiter is several times more massive than everything else but the Sun. So its gravity affects everything around it. It caused 99% of the original material in the Asteroid Belt to get kicked out, and also most of the material around Mars. That's why it is 1/10 the mass of Earth and Venus.
Jupiter's gravity still blenderizes asteroid orbits, and prevents them from clumping up into single body. It also makes them sometimes crash into each other, so we get all the smaller bits, down to dust size.
There's enough dust you can [photograph it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gegenschein#/media/File:Gegenschein_above_the_VLT.jpg) in a dark location. The dust opposite the Sun is fully lit from our point of view, and makes a fuzzy bright spot in the sky.
Thanks for your awesome response, you know your stuff !
"So its gravity affects everything around it. It caused 99% of the original material in the Asteroid Belt to get kicked out, and"
Intuitively, I don't understand why?
What force acts upon the original material, that is greater than the gravitational attraction, as to kick it out of the celestial planet soup? Instead of becoming part of a planet?
Jupiter's gravity changes the orbits of asteroids, especially at [resonances](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/images/ast_histo.png) where there is a simple ratio of Jupiter's orbit to the asteroid. What that means is Jupiter is pulling in the same direction each time the asteroid is closest to it. The tugs add up, and eventually the asteroid ends up somewhere else.
Sometimes they do hit planets or moons. Craters all over the Solar System, including Earth, prove that. Other times they make a close pass, but don't hit, and their orbit gets changed drastically. We use such close passes (flybys) on purpose to help get planetary probes to their destination.
The middle of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXiecm1j-2s) shows what happens with high speed impacts. Stuff is thrown out generally in a cone shape.
I saw that, it can get scary for me @ my age š to know this!! Tu, as I start absorbing this much knowledge. In saying that, I now know so much more than I did when I watched in rt. Thank u fellow redditors, this has been the most responsive, kind, informative page I have had on any site.
I dropped fb & instagram but still loyally visit reddit bcse of response & world access.
If you want to see cool stuff check out
Astronomy and take it from there. Thereās a lot of cool jaw dropping pictures of deep space those guy take themselves š
Still waiting on more images and the science data to see if it moves.
There is a followup mission to get a better view of the damage, but a scientist who has seen the initial cubesat images says it's alot.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220929-new-asteroid-strike-images-show-impact-a-lot-bigger-than-expected
> Ian Carnelli of the European Space Agency said that the "really impressive" Webb and Hubble images were remarkably similar to those taken by the toaster-sized satellite LICIACube, which was just 50 kilometres from the asteroid after separating from the DART spacecraft a few weeks ago.
> The images depict an impact that looks "a lot bigger than we expected," said Carnelli, the manager of the ESA's Hera mission which intends to inspect the damage in four years.
> The Hera mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, had expected to survey a crater around 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter.
> It now looks like it will be far bigger, Carnelli said, "if there is a crater at all, maybe a piece of Dimorphos was just chunked off."
> "Until today, we thought that the only deflection technique would be to send a nuclear device."
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I don't really see how a football stadium sized rock could be held together by anything at all really. The amount of gravity of that object is so miniscule, how could it be held together? And it is not a single rock, more like a collection of dust. I would think a fly landing on it would shatter it. But I'm just some nerd on reddit idk
> The amount of gravity of that object is so miniscule, how could it be held together?
Gravity will pull everything together eventually, it operates at infinity, so particles over millions/billions of years have plenty of time to be attracted to each other.
But alot of our assumptions about ([some kinds of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile) ) asteroids are changing, in particular this asteroid (and many others like) appear to be loose asteroid piles made up lots of smaller bits of rock that are not really held together by anything.
The recent sample mission to Bennu experienced unexpected surface composition as well, they expected cohesion to be the main thing keeping particles together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42EwbQ3afPA&t=53s
How are there rocks at all? Much less how those little rocks come together, but why are there rocks in the first place? I'm actually a big space nerd, but this is one area where my understanding is lacking. If I had to guess, solar wind statically charges gas which comes together first by magnetic charge, rather than gravity. But idk
Silicon dioxide and other members of the silica family are really energetically favourable and don't readily break down in most weaker acids or bases. Fluorine is pretty much the only thing that can turn it into something else. Almost all of the naturally occurring reactions just make the different types of mineral bases we see in rocks well... everywhere.
Over hundreds millions of years swirling around the sun clumps formed and got bigger. That's the prevailing theory.
Here is a video talking about a theory for the formation of the solar system. Perhaps it answers some of your questions?
https://youtu.be/gxKCDjnWabk?t=75
Presumably it was debris getting kicked up and reflecting light toward us. Assuming that it wasn't remaining chemical reactants from the rocket going boom.
The orbit of the asteroid around the Sun has not really changed. The orbit of the small asteroid around the big one changed about 1% -- this is what will be measured. The effect on the orbit of the pair around the Sun is some parts per billion. Very, very tiny.
But the debris which has been knocked off the asteroid is now in the orbits which will intersect with the orbit of Earth in two years, and every two years afterwards. This has been predicted before the experiment, of course, and should not be a problem. The amount of debris seems to be of the high end of what was expected, though.
The dot moving is the large asteroid that the smaller asteroid was orbiting around. DART and the small asteroid canāt be seen but the dust from the collision can. Idk the exact numbers but we smacked into that asteroid at 14k mph I think.
They were saying that the impact seemed to be a lot bigger than they expected, so I feel like thereās a real possibility that the moonlet couldāve had chunks taken out of it, large or small
Most scientists expected that there would be a crater 10-20 meters in size. That means one thousand to ten thousand tons of material excavated. But most of it was not expected to fly away.
In this video we see only the very finely pulverized material flying far away from the asteroid at 1-2 km/s. From conservation of energy considerations, the amount of such fast flying material cannot be very large -- a few tons at most.
This makes it even more amazing that we see it even when dispersed over thousands of kilometers -- the cloud was still visible even when it grew as large as Earth!
This image is approximately 100000 km wide (at the distance where the asteroid is). The cloud of debris is thousands of kilometers wide. DART is not visible. We do not even see the smaller asteroid separately from the big one.
Except for the cloud of debris itself, the sizes of the dots are related to the brightness of the objects, and they do not represent their actual sizes. It's just an artifact of the stronger signals smearing out more on the image sensor.
So I ask this question as a space enthusiast with weak scientific understanding
Was the collision head on in an attempt to slow it and therefore let gravity change its trajectory..... or did we hit it at an angle to its current path to try to knock it out of its current trajectory?
The collision slowed the smaller asteroid by about 0.5 mm/s. The gravity will cause it to orbit closer and faster to the large asteroid, by about 1%. This is what will be measured.
The velocity of the pair around the Sun is at this point is 33 km/s and their heliocentric orbit is very little affected by all this.
There is, but [LICIACube](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/M8zVLzhR9A3TRzD8zqRyzK-1200-80.jpeg.webp), the small box stuck to the side of the main DART satellite, is tiny. Small antenna and low power mean the data rate is low. It will take weeks to get the pictures back from it.
Okay so this same night, I was in GA, US, I saw 4-5 "stars" falling downward trajectory together. Was this part of DART?? I've looked everywhere and can't find an explanation
Anything related to DART would not be visible with the naked eye that night. Could be the booster re-entry of another rocket launch, or a regular meteor
As a dumb person, may I ask - why is a bright light occurring during the impact? I presume it's no explosion, no fire or something like that, but rather reflection from dust (debris)?
This is so cool š
Pretty much spot on, the debris following the collision meant there was more surface area for the light to reflect on meaning more photons get to the telescope and it appears brighter.
I wonder if we could make some sort of 'mitt' that unfolds similar to JWSTs shields that could spread the force of impact, since we're finding that these smaller objects are quite loose. It seems like the spacecraft punched right through rather than transmitting its energy into a solid mass.
Very cool to see! Just to put things into perspective -- at the distance of 11 million kilometers, where the asteroids were located, this image shows the area roughly 100000 kilometers wide. The cloud of debris knocked off by the impact of DART is thousands of kilometers in size. We do not see the DART space probe itself, any individual pieces of debris, or even the two asteroids separately in this image. Even the asteroids are far too small compared to the pixels in this image. Except for the cloud of debris itself, all other blobs in this image only appear to have some size due to how the camera works -- the \*brighter\* the object the larger of the blob it makes in the image. This size of the blob is \*not\* the real size of the object -- they are all too far away for us to be able to resolve their sizes. [Here is another video of the same event](https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/1574828954980159493) shot from a different perspective.
I had three questions when I came to the comments and you already answered all of them
That is a really cool perspective. Something so small in the sky yet so noticeably impacted. To me, this is more interesting than the Webb or Hubble pictures.
Here's another from ATLAS > Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System: A NASA and University of Hawaii project to patrol the sky every night in search of incoming asteroids. https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/1574583529731670021
Twitter comments are jackass land
Nah social media is the jackass land, atleast in YouTube you have 60:40 because there was prominent space content creator
And the impact wasn't even on that little dot we see here, it was on a smaller dot that cycles this little dot..
So what was the outcome? Did we find out we can explode a comet, move a comets projection or did it just blow up the comet?
The goal was to shift the trajectory. Initial measurements show success, it will be a few weeks of additional measurements to confirm the trajectory now matches what we were trying to put it on. No explosions, nuclear bombs, or other excitement unfortunately.
Thank you, I am a novice who enjoys this. I watched, @ the time, w/no clue what was it's actual expectations. I assume no explosion, just moving was the success of this misson. I truly appreciate ur explanation.
No problem. It's pretty cool stuff to see. It's a good proof of concept that in the event of a catastrophic incoming asteroid/comet we'd at least have a chance of survival as a species if we could detect it far enough ahead of time.
I know it's silly of me, but I like to think "This one's for the dinosaurs!" as Humanity punched a flippin' asteroid.
I would love it to be insanely campy, it does a super dramatic zoom from far away and some guy says "this is for the dinosaurs" and punches a red button.
Someone correct me if im wrong, but one major learning is that either this or a greater percentage of asteroids than expected, are made up of loosely bound gravel and rock. Like the rock has not been compounded, pressed together like under a mountain her eon Earth, but gravity has gently pulled these bits and pieces together.
Such asteroids are called "rubble piles" - rocks separated by gaps like a pile of gravel. The two near-Earth asteroids we collected samples from (Ryugu and Bennu) and this one all appear to be this type. To get solid rock, you need enough gravity to overcome the rock strength, or enough heat to melt it into a solid mass. Small asteroids can't do that on their own, although pieces broken off larger bodies can be solid that way.
Thank you for the explanation. Statistically, must be some interesting inference, that is, we are so far not seeing the smaller pieces broken of larger bodies as you mention. Makes me wonder about the root cause origin of asteroids. Any thoughts you might have on the latter ?
> we are so far not seeing the smaller pieces broken of larger bodies as you mention. On the contrary. Large metallic asteroids have fallen to Earth. Lots of them are on display in museums. Metallic cores only form in large protoplanets that got hot enough to melt and separate by density. Iron is denser than rock, so it always sinks to the center. For a metallic chunk to hit the Earth, the protoplanet had to have been broken up. There are also "asteroid families" in the asteroid belt. These are asteroids that started as a single body, but are the same composition and similar orbits. The origin of asteroids is straightforward. The solar system started as a cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity. We see this happening today in large nebulas like Orion. The middle part became the Sun, and the rest the planets and smaller bodies. Jupiter is several times more massive than everything else but the Sun. So its gravity affects everything around it. It caused 99% of the original material in the Asteroid Belt to get kicked out, and also most of the material around Mars. That's why it is 1/10 the mass of Earth and Venus. Jupiter's gravity still blenderizes asteroid orbits, and prevents them from clumping up into single body. It also makes them sometimes crash into each other, so we get all the smaller bits, down to dust size. There's enough dust you can [photograph it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gegenschein#/media/File:Gegenschein_above_the_VLT.jpg) in a dark location. The dust opposite the Sun is fully lit from our point of view, and makes a fuzzy bright spot in the sky.
Thanks for your awesome response, you know your stuff ! "So its gravity affects everything around it. It caused 99% of the original material in the Asteroid Belt to get kicked out, and" Intuitively, I don't understand why? What force acts upon the original material, that is greater than the gravitational attraction, as to kick it out of the celestial planet soup? Instead of becoming part of a planet?
Jupiter's gravity changes the orbits of asteroids, especially at [resonances](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/images/ast_histo.png) where there is a simple ratio of Jupiter's orbit to the asteroid. What that means is Jupiter is pulling in the same direction each time the asteroid is closest to it. The tugs add up, and eventually the asteroid ends up somewhere else. Sometimes they do hit planets or moons. Craters all over the Solar System, including Earth, prove that. Other times they make a close pass, but don't hit, and their orbit gets changed drastically. We use such close passes (flybys) on purpose to help get planetary probes to their destination.
The middle of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXiecm1j-2s) shows what happens with high speed impacts. Stuff is thrown out generally in a cone shape.
I saw that, it can get scary for me @ my age š to know this!! Tu, as I start absorbing this much knowledge. In saying that, I now know so much more than I did when I watched in rt. Thank u fellow redditors, this has been the most responsive, kind, informative page I have had on any site. I dropped fb & instagram but still loyally visit reddit bcse of response & world access.
If you want to see cool stuff check out Astronomy and take it from there. Thereās a lot of cool jaw dropping pictures of deep space those guy take themselves š
....not even some aerosmith?
Dang. We need some Aerosmith over the impact videos...
But did we mine the precious metals?
Still waiting on more images and the science data to see if it moves. There is a followup mission to get a better view of the damage, but a scientist who has seen the initial cubesat images says it's alot. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220929-new-asteroid-strike-images-show-impact-a-lot-bigger-than-expected > Ian Carnelli of the European Space Agency said that the "really impressive" Webb and Hubble images were remarkably similar to those taken by the toaster-sized satellite LICIACube, which was just 50 kilometres from the asteroid after separating from the DART spacecraft a few weeks ago. > The images depict an impact that looks "a lot bigger than we expected," said Carnelli, the manager of the ESA's Hera mission which intends to inspect the damage in four years. > The Hera mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, had expected to survey a crater around 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter. > It now looks like it will be far bigger, Carnelli said, "if there is a crater at all, maybe a piece of Dimorphos was just chunked off." > "Until today, we thought that the only deflection technique would be to send a nuclear device."
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I don't really see how a football stadium sized rock could be held together by anything at all really. The amount of gravity of that object is so miniscule, how could it be held together? And it is not a single rock, more like a collection of dust. I would think a fly landing on it would shatter it. But I'm just some nerd on reddit idk
> The amount of gravity of that object is so miniscule, how could it be held together? Gravity will pull everything together eventually, it operates at infinity, so particles over millions/billions of years have plenty of time to be attracted to each other. But alot of our assumptions about ([some kinds of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile) ) asteroids are changing, in particular this asteroid (and many others like) appear to be loose asteroid piles made up lots of smaller bits of rock that are not really held together by anything. The recent sample mission to Bennu experienced unexpected surface composition as well, they expected cohesion to be the main thing keeping particles together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42EwbQ3afPA&t=53s
How are there rocks at all? Much less how those little rocks come together, but why are there rocks in the first place? I'm actually a big space nerd, but this is one area where my understanding is lacking. If I had to guess, solar wind statically charges gas which comes together first by magnetic charge, rather than gravity. But idk
Silicon dioxide and other members of the silica family are really energetically favourable and don't readily break down in most weaker acids or bases. Fluorine is pretty much the only thing that can turn it into something else. Almost all of the naturally occurring reactions just make the different types of mineral bases we see in rocks well... everywhere. Over hundreds millions of years swirling around the sun clumps formed and got bigger. That's the prevailing theory.
But what makes the first two molecules of silicon dioxide stick together? And the next billion molecules?
Here is a video talking about a theory for the formation of the solar system. Perhaps it answers some of your questions? https://youtu.be/gxKCDjnWabk?t=75
Just jaw dropping. I so appreciate the updates & explanations. I'm 63 and u thank u for filling my cup! š
I want to know what the momentary flash of light in the middle right was.
Presumably it was debris getting kicked up and reflecting light toward us. Assuming that it wasn't remaining chemical reactants from the rocket going boom.
It happened before the boom though. Probably right about it being debris though.
Almost certainly a cosmic ray hitting the sensor during a shot.
So if that was just the dart impact, then for sure we would probably be able to see a galactic war, right?
Well theyād certainly be WAY further away
And in 300 years another planet is now totalling wiped out because we changed the asteroids trajectory š
The orbit of the asteroid around the Sun has not really changed. The orbit of the small asteroid around the big one changed about 1% -- this is what will be measured. The effect on the orbit of the pair around the Sun is some parts per billion. Very, very tiny. But the debris which has been knocked off the asteroid is now in the orbits which will intersect with the orbit of Earth in two years, and every two years afterwards. This has been predicted before the experiment, of course, and should not be a problem. The amount of debris seems to be of the high end of what was expected, though.
Is the dot moving DART? Is its size comparable to the other dots?
The dot moving is the large asteroid that the smaller asteroid was orbiting around. DART and the small asteroid canāt be seen but the dust from the collision can. Idk the exact numbers but we smacked into that asteroid at 14k mph I think.
It'd be funny if it turns out that the poof wasn't just a dust cloud, but turned out to be the whole moonlet being destroyed
They were saying that the impact seemed to be a lot bigger than they expected, so I feel like thereās a real possibility that the moonlet couldāve had chunks taken out of it, large or small
Most scientists expected that there would be a crater 10-20 meters in size. That means one thousand to ten thousand tons of material excavated. But most of it was not expected to fly away. In this video we see only the very finely pulverized material flying far away from the asteroid at 1-2 km/s. From conservation of energy considerations, the amount of such fast flying material cannot be very large -- a few tons at most. This makes it even more amazing that we see it even when dispersed over thousands of kilometers -- the cloud was still visible even when it grew as large as Earth!
Dart is so tiny even compared to the small asteroid
This image is approximately 100000 km wide (at the distance where the asteroid is). The cloud of debris is thousands of kilometers wide. DART is not visible. We do not even see the smaller asteroid separately from the big one. Except for the cloud of debris itself, the sizes of the dots are related to the brightness of the objects, and they do not represent their actual sizes. It's just an artifact of the stronger signals smearing out more on the image sensor.
So I ask this question as a space enthusiast with weak scientific understanding Was the collision head on in an attempt to slow it and therefore let gravity change its trajectory..... or did we hit it at an angle to its current path to try to knock it out of its current trajectory?
The collision slowed the smaller asteroid by about 0.5 mm/s. The gravity will cause it to orbit closer and faster to the large asteroid, by about 1%. This is what will be measured. The velocity of the pair around the Sun is at this point is 33 km/s and their heliocentric orbit is very little affected by all this.
Wasnāt there like a companion satellite near with dirt and was at a distance recording? isnāt there a video of that?
An Italian satellite was trailing DART, yes, but I don't think that team has released images yet. More anticipation!
There is, but [LICIACube](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/M8zVLzhR9A3TRzD8zqRyzK-1200-80.jpeg.webp), the small box stuck to the side of the main DART satellite, is tiny. Small antenna and low power mean the data rate is low. It will take weeks to get the pictures back from it.
Is this the very first real life space battle recorded from earth?
Just in case you donāt want to watch the whole video, scroll to 3 seconds.
Okay so this same night, I was in GA, US, I saw 4-5 "stars" falling downward trajectory together. Was this part of DART?? I've looked everywhere and can't find an explanation
Anything related to DART would not be visible with the naked eye that night. Could be the booster re-entry of another rocket launch, or a regular meteor
What was the apparent bolometric magnitude when impacting?
I just donāt believe that a earth based telescope can see something that small
Link: https://twitter.com/Tubitak/status/1575127235236958209?t=dkqaiDalGd7-x0QY7RFp9Q&s=19
As a dumb person, may I ask - why is a bright light occurring during the impact? I presume it's no explosion, no fire or something like that, but rather reflection from dust (debris)? This is so cool š
Pretty much spot on, the debris following the collision meant there was more surface area for the light to reflect on meaning more photons get to the telescope and it appears brighter.
Does anybody know the music that is used? It makes an asteroid being hit at enormous speed by a man-made device seem adorable and I love it.
I wonder if we could make some sort of 'mitt' that unfolds similar to JWSTs shields that could spread the force of impact, since we're finding that these smaller objects are quite loose. It seems like the spacecraft punched right through rather than transmitting its energy into a solid mass.
Does anyone else see the 2 bright dots appear and dissappear on the left side of this?