The Dinosaurs Never Saw It Coming

By Aaron B. Clevenson, ALCor

“The lonely Earth amid the balls,
That hurry through the eternal halls,
A makeweight flying to the void,
Supplemental asteroid,
Or compensatory spark,
Shoots across the neutral Dark.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If dinosaurs had had telescopes, and had they been watching the night sky with them (in stead of looking for food on the far hillside), would the world be ruled today by giant terrible lizards? Or more relevant to us, since we have telescopes, and since we do look at the night sky with them, will our fate be that of the dinosaurs? (Play Twilight Zone music here: do doo do doo, do doo do doo…)

This month, in the fourteenth article in the series of AL Club Certifications, we look to the minor planets, the asteroids. This is a look at the Astronomical Leagues Asteroid Observing Club.

For this certification, you definitely need a telescope. There are two levels of certification: Regular and Gold. For regular, you will need at least a 4-inch telescope and you must document the movement of 25 asteroids. For the gold level, you will need at least a 6-inch telescope and must document a total of 100 asteroids.

Okay. Sounds easy enough. What exactly do I need? Well you will need to have access to a computer and a program that will let you find the asteroids. I use Megastar. It can show me the location of an asteroid on any particular date (and time). Be sure to use the latest element sets. On one recent outing we discovered that an out-of-date database could cause significant position error.

Okay. Sounds easy enough. What exactly do I need to do? Well, find them of course. You need to make three observations for each asteroid. The first one is find it, and sketch its position among the stars. At some time later, maybe hours, maybe days, find the same spot and note the asteroid is no longer there. And lastly, find it again, in its new position and sketch its new position among the stars.

That’s it. Not too difficult, but yes, it is 300 observations and 200 sketches. This club gives you the opportunity to view many of these minor planets, most of them between Mars and Jupiter, and to dream of the day when humans may be mining them for their riches – assuming we do better than the dinosaurs, and see it coming.

Join us again next month for the strange, the unusual, the peculiar… the ARP Peculiar Galaxies.