Israel is an important station in observations of asteroids that pass near the Earth
Tamara Traubman
Photo: Alon Ron
At the observatory standing on top of a hill on the outskirts of Givataim, they gathered yesterday
About 40 astronomy enthusiasts. They arrived at the annual conference of the "Association
the Israeli Institute for Astronomy". The chairman of the association and director of the observatory, Yigal Fat-El,
He told them that in about two weeks amateur astronomers would join the effort
international, whose purpose is to track asteroids that pass near the Earth,
and may one day collide with it.
As part of the new project, explained Fat-El, night observations will be carried out
And data will be collected that will help calculate the orbit of the asteroids more precisely.
The goal of the project is to improve the existing knowledge about asteroids, and even
To locate asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth, to
It will be possible to warn about this ahead of time.
In recent years, tracking of near-Earth asteroids has stopped
to be considered an esoteric field, and became a field that receives serious attention.
Improved observation methods have revealed that there are over a thousand moving around the sun
Asteroids in orbits that may bring them dangerously close to Earth.
The collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy with the planet Jupiter about seven years ago
years, made it clear to scientists that the Earth is not immune from impact by objects.
A team of NASA experts, appointed at the time at the request of the American government, predicted that
At some time in the future a large asteroid will indeed hit Earth; the question
It's just when it will happen, and what consequences it will have for life in the sphere
Country.
If an asteroid hits the Earth, chances are the impact will happen
in an uninhabited area. Such was the case with the last large asteroid to hit
on earth The asteroid, several tens of meters in diameter, collided in
1908 in Siberia. The intensity of the energy produced in the collision was equal to that of
A large atomic bomb, and it destroyed vegetation in a range of hundreds of square kilometers. but
Because the asteroid landed in an uninhabited area, no humans were harmed. With
This, according to experts, if the impact of the asteroid had been delayed by some
hours London was completely destroyed.
After the conclusions of the NASA committee were submitted, the agency allocated a billion
dollars for asteroid exploration. One of the programs funded by NASA today is
"Program," LINEAR array of telescopes operated by American scientists
from MIT scans segments of the sky every day in order to locate asteroids
The holidays are close to Earth.
The information about each new asteroid discovered by LINEAR and another telescope in Japan,
Transferred directly to a website called "SpaceGuard" the Israeli enthusiasts
They will refer to the site for updates, and will be able to keep track of the asteroids
The new ones to be discovered.
The data collected during the observations will be transferred via the Internet to the MPC center
which deals with the collection and processing of the accumulated information from observations made around the world.
Fatal says that prolonged observations that provide data on their exact trajectory
of asteroids are almost never done with professional telescopes. cost of use
in these telescopes is high, and the telescope should serve many scientists,
Working on diverse research topics, and competing for the opportunity to carry out the
their studies. "That's why," says Fat-El, "for the observations of amateurs - who can."
Today, buying a sophisticated telescope at a cheap price is of particular importance
this".
According to Fat-El, the Israeli amateur group will have a unique contribution
For the international project, this is because their observatory is between
The few observatories located in the longitude of Israel. Most of the asteroids
They pass relatively close to the Earth once every few years, and then they can be seen
well even in relatively small telescopes. "If something suspicious is discovered in Japan
As a new asteroid, and in rainy Europe, there are no good observation conditions, we
The last point before the USA from which it will be possible to observe the asteroid,
and collect data on it," explains Fat-El.
