Next week, the attention of astronomers around the world will be riveted to a giant asteroid, but not at all because he hazardous. 4179 Tautatis 4.46 km long and 2.4 wide km is one of the largest asteroids seen near the Earth. 12 December he will pass us at a distance of 6.9 million km (more than 18 distances from Earth to the Moon).
A photo from open sources
Computer model of Tautatis (image Michael Busch). Astronomers are especially interested in how the body rotates similar shape. Michael Bush of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (USA), which studied data on an asteroid obtained in the time of his previous visits (they happen every four years) says this: “He tumbles, that is, rotates around a long axis, which in turn makes a circular motion, like a gyroscope (this phenomenon is known as precession. “Mr. Bush and his colleagues planned to refine the Tautatis rotation model created in 1996 year, but it turned out that one data analysis for 2000, 2004 and 2008 years not enough. Whenever the asteriod approaches the sun or Earth, they pull it slightly toward themselves, changing the rotation. the effect very small, but for many years it sums up. Only after of how scientists were able to take these changes into account, they succeeded new, refined model. And she suggested how it is distributed mass of an asteroid. Tautatis is at the same time similar to tuberous peanuts and (at a certain angle) onto a clumsy snowman. is he long and narrow, with two distinct fractions of unequal size. Mr. Bush’s team found that the mass of the object unevenly distributed, indicating complex internal structure. Perhaps she was the result of a collision with the body slightly less. It is likely that Tutatis himself is two collided and stuck together object. There is such an option: a strange form of an asteroid was the result of a yorp effect that explains how under exposure to sunlight alone an asteroid can start rotate. The wind blowing on the propeller sets it in motion, explains Dan Shears from the University of Colorado (USA) studying Tautatis for almost two decades now. The same thing happens when photons hit an uneven body, forcing it to rotate faster. Mr. Shears believes that at some point the asteroid acquired such a speed that he began to throw material into space, in As a result, one body turned into two. Over time, both of them slowed down and reunited, after which it all started again. New data on an asteroid were presented at the conference American Geophysical Union. Prepared by materials National Geographics.
US time
