Earth’s First Trojan Asteroid discovered by NASA’s WISE
A "Trojan" asteroid has been discovered sharing Earth's solar orbit by astronomers studying observations taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. Trojans are asteroids that are gravitationally bound to a planet, but are not moons, because they do not orbit the planet. Instead they orbit one of the two stable points in front of or behind the planet, called Lagrangian points (L4 and L5 to be precise).
Cosmic Hearts
I hope you all had a happy Valentine's Day! :) Here are some pictures of cosmic hearts: A heart-shaped crater on Mars captured by the Mars Orbiter Camera onboard the Mars Global Surveyor. A heart-shaped Nebula, called W5, located 6000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia.
Dark Asteroids Discovered, Possible Threat to Earth
An infrared space telescope, called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has discovered several dark asteroids close to Earth that could possibly be a threat to our planet. Those asteroids are very dark and reflect less than 10% of the sunlight they receive, which makes them extremely hard to spot with traditional telescopes.
