30th June, Asteroid Day

Ryugu asteroid. Poster to illustrate the activities that the Solar System group of the IAC carries out on the Asteroid Day. Background image credit: JAXA.
Ryugu asteroid. Poster to illustrate the activities that the Solar System group of the IAC carries out on the Asteroid Day. Background image credit: JAXA.
Advertised on

In 2016 the United Nations declared June 30th as Asteroid Day, to raise awareness about the potential risk of asteroid impacts on the Earth, and to spread knowledge about these small bodies connected with the origins of the Solar System. To celebrate this, there will be world wide outreach activities related to these objects in space.

The IAC will join in this celebration with lectures given by some of its researchers. Julia de León will be giving a lecture in the Planetarium of Castellón (Valencia) on July 6th, in which she will explain the composition of the asteroids and the space missions which are currently on the way to two of them. In particular she will talk about the NASA OSIRIS-Rex mission, of which she is a member.

Miquel Serra Ricart, via the citizen science project “Asteroid Hunters” cazasteroides.org), of which he is in charge will begin, on Friday 29th June, a contest related to Asteroid Day. The user of this application for mobile phones which wins first place in the ranking will win a metallic meteorite (found in the Sikhote Alin cráter, in Russia). Cazasteroids was initiated at the end of 2016, funded jointly by the FECYT, the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the IAC has over 3,000 users, some 70,000 detections, and 197 new asteroid candidates.

Artistic representation of the collision between two asteroids of the main belt: https://youtu.be/hyE6EbFTOAU 

News type
Press release
General public
Communications media

It may interest you

  • El programa Investigadores Visitantes Fundación Occident
    Press release
    El IAC recibe este otoño a un nuevo grupo de personal investigador dentro del programa de Visitantes de Fundación Occident
    El programa Investigadores Visitantes Fundación Occident del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) sigue su curso con la recepción de un nuevo grupo de personal investigador procedente de distintos centros del mundo. Los investigadores cubrirán un amplio espectro de disciplinas, desde cosmología y astrofísica de partículas hasta física estelar, formación de galaxias y sistemas planetarios. Su presencia y colaboración con el personal investigador del IAC fortalecerá la actividad científica tanto del centro canario como de las personas invitadas y de sus centros de origen, fortaleciendo
    Advertised on
  • Artist’s concept of WASP-39 b
    Press release
    Astronomers observe differences in sunrises and sunsets on a distant world
    Using observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has confirmed variations in morning and evening atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39 b, about 700 light-years away from Earth. The research has revealed differences in temperature and atmospheric pressure, as well as indications of different cloudiness and winds that could reach thousands of miles per hour. The results are published in Nature. WASP-39 b, a giant planet with a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, but
    Advertised on
  • The LST-1 telescope at La Palma
    Press release
    LST-1 telescope on La Palma detects the most distant quasar at very high energies
    The first Large-Sized Telescope (LST) prototype of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma), has made its first scientific discovery by detecting the source OP 313 above 100 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), a level of energy a billion times higher than the visible light that humans can perceive. It is the most distant quasar ever observed by gamma-ray instruments from the ground. On 15 December, the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration announced through an Astronomer’s Telegram (ATel) the detection of the source OP
    Advertised on