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Spectroscopic Analysis Of DART Impact Debris Cloud (SF Prediction)
ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) was used by astronomers to observe the aftermath of the collision between NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos. The impact gave astronomers a unique opportunity to learn more about the asteroid's composition from the material ejected upon impact.
( ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the evolution of the cloud of debris )
On September 26, 2022, the DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos in a controlled test of our asteroid deflection capabilities. The impact took place 11 million kilometers away from Earth, close enough to be observed in detail with many telescopes. All four 8.2-meter telescopes of ESO's VLT in Chile observed the aftermath of the impact, and the first results of these VLT observations have now been published in two papers."Asteroids are some of the most basic relics of what all the planets and moons in our solar system were created from," says Brian Murphy, a Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh in the UK and co-author of one of the studies. "Studying the cloud of material ejected after DART's impact can therefore tell us about how our solar system formed."
...Opitom and her team followed the evolution of the cloud of debris for a month with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at ESO's VLT. They found that the ejected cloud was bluer than the asteroid itself was before the impact, indicating that the cloud could be made of very fine particles. In the hours and days that followed the impact other structures developed: clumps, spirals and a long tail pushed away by the sun's radiation. The spirals and tail were redder than the initial cloud, and so could be made of larger particles.
(Via PhysOrg.)
This basic idea was predicted and described by science fiction writer E.C. Tubb in his 1958 classic The Mechanical Monarch:
"There it is. Can you get a spectro?""No heat." Wendis shook his head. "I'll have to warm it up with a tracer."
Fire streaked in a thin line from the muzzle of a cannon-like tube mounted beneath the viewing instruments and a tiny, rocket-powered projectile, drove towards the mysterious bulk. It hit, exploding into a cloud of incandescent vapour, and Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.
"... the spectro shows traces of iron, some copper, a little tungsten and a lot of beryllium. Looks unnatural somehow, too much like an alloy."
(Read more about Impactor Determines Composition)
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