St. Louis Astronomical Society Meeting - Do Main-Belt Asteroids Change Colors?
Asteroids are chunks of metal, rock, or metal/rock mixtures that orbit the Sun. Most orbit in the “Main Belt” between Mars and Jupiter, but a few have elongated paths that cross Earth’s orbit. Most are less than a few miles across. They are typically shades of gray, but instruments attached to large telescopes reveal slight coloring. The large, 98 inches across, telescope used for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) recorded changes in color for some asteroids. Mr. Linder has been studying the SDSS color variability for over five years as part of his PhD thesis research. He will present the current understanding of this problem and the planned observing method to be able to answer the question, “Do main-belt asteroids change color?”
Tyler Linder is a PhD candidate at the University of North Dakota. For the past decade he has managed the Astronomical Research Institute’s southern hemisphere facet of their Near-Earth Asteroid observations program at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.
The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals interested in astronomy and telescopes. The public is invited to attend its meetings, telescope observing sessions, and special events. For more information about Astronomical Society events, please visit www.slasonline.org or call 314-962-9231. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium at Washington University in St. Louis, is open to the public free of charge.
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