[meteorite-list] High Flyers Look For Fabled Asteroids Near Sun

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:08:30 2004
Message-ID: <200209241708.KAA22063_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/09/24/vulcanoids.search/index.html

High flyers look for fabled asteroids near sun
By Richard Stenger
CNN
September 24, 2002

Taking high-altitude spins in a fighter jet in the days leading up to the
September equinox, scientists looked for a legendary group of asteroids that
might circle the sun closer than Mercury.

The innermost region of the solar system has been the subject of
considerable debate since the late 19th Century, when many astronomers
concluded that perturbations in Mercury's orbit must be caused by a hidden
planet, dubbed "Vulcan" after the Roman god of fire and metallurgy.

Within decades, Einstein's theory of relativity explained away the
gravitational glitches, but theoretical models still indicated that perhaps
hundreds of space boulders up to about 20 miles (30 kilometers) in diameter
could survive between Mercury and the sun.

The possibility tantalized Alan Stern and Dan Durda of the Southwest
Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, who last week soared to
nearly 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), snapping pictures of promising space
regions to find the fabled space rocks.

Vulcanoids, because of their small size and proximity to the sun, would be
too faint for detection except under the most ideal viewing conditions.

Stern and Durda timed their stratospheric runs in an F-18 to just before
dawn, when the Earth blocks the obliterating light of the sun from the
innermost part of the solar system.

Moreover, they took to the skies as close as they could to the September 23
equinox, when the positional relationship of the Earth and sun offers the
best viewing opportunities.

Over the following months, they will sift through hundreds of thousands of
images to look for evidence of the asteroids.

"Everything went well. The data looks good [but] the actual full reduction
of data will take many weeks. I can't give you a eureka moment answer as to
whether we found anything," Durda said.

No vulcanoids turned up after a similar search around the March equinox. But
Stern and Durda's latest expedition above the California desert could prove
more productive, considering that their specialized digital video camera was
equipped with a more powerful lens.

"It can detect objects roughly five times fainter than in the spring," said
Alan Brown, a spokesman at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in California,
which hosted the aerial experiment.

The camera, originally designed by the SwRI for use on the space shuttle,
can take images of objects as many as 600 times fainter than what the
unaided human eye can see.

Stern, Durda and colleagues would eventually like to take their search even
higher, looking for the fabled drifters in a modified spy plane.

"We're hoping to fly to 70,000 feet (21,000 meters) in a U-2 to get up to a
darker sky," said SwRI astronomer Dick Terrell.
Received on Tue 24 Sep 2002 01:08:27 PM PDT