{"id":11816,"date":"2013-02-08T13:32:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T20:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=11816"},"modified":"2013-02-22T16:39:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T23:39:37","slug":"nau-researcher-looks-forward-to-data-from-upcoming-asteroid-close-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-researcher-looks-forward-to-data-from-upcoming-asteroid-close-up\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU researcher looks forward to data from upcoming asteroid close-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

When asteroid 2012 DA14 zips past Earth on Friday on an arc that cuts beneath communications satellites, David Trilling<\/strong> won\u2019t be peering through a telescope. But he will eagerly await the data that will almost certainly find its way to his desk at Northern Arizona University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to see what they come up with,\u201d said Trilling, an assistant professor of astronomy who works partly to synthesize existing information\u2014drawing from extensive archives of data to characterize known asteroids\u2014while also looking for new objects hurtling through space.<\/p>\n

Through a variety of NASA-funded grants to support research on near-Earth objects, Trilling and his colleagues look for asteroids in orbits that might come close to Earth. \u201cWe want to know what they\u2019re made of and understand their internal properties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Part of that work is to add to knowledge about the universe. \u201cBut if we want to deflect one, then we want to know more about what it\u2019s made of,\u201d Trilling said.<\/p>\n

Trilling describes the upcoming flyby of the 150-foot-wide asteroid as \u201ca pretty big deal\u201d even though there is no chance of an impact with Earth, unlike the asteroid of about the same size that created Arizona\u2019s Meteor Crater. Scientists are sure that the asteroid will get no closer than 17,200 miles at its closest approach<\/a> at 12:26 p.m. MST.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re confident that there\u2019s no risk because we\u2019ve made so many measurements of the position of this object,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cWe know its orbit quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, much of the data that Trilling analyzes comes from \u201caccidental information\u201d that arises when an asteroid shows up in the field of view of a powerful telescope that was looking for something else.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find them through some clever tricks, measure their brightness in the field of observation, then do some mathematical modeling that combines image data with other information we have to get a measurement of asteroid properties,\u201d Trilling said.<\/p>\n

The upcoming flyby will be no accidental find, though, so data collection by amateurs and professionals, filtered through a formal clearinghouse<\/a> and posted online, will provide valuable insights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an asteroid that\u2019s so close that it\u2019s pretty easy for us to study,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cThen, as we understand one asteroid better, we can extrapolate that information to thousands of others that look like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next week\u2019s event serves as a preview for the International Planetary Defense Conference<\/a> to be held in Flagstaff in April. Trilling, the local organizer, said more than 200 scientists will gather to discuss all aspects of asteroid research, including how to \u201ceradicate risk.\u201d And if a collision cannot be prevented? \u201cWe\u2019re planning a session that covers the environmental and social effects\u201d of an impact, Trilling said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When asteroid 2012 DA14 zips past Earth on Friday on an arc that cuts beneath communications satellites, David Trilling won\u2019t be peering through a telescope. But he will eagerly await the data that will almost certainly find its way to his desk at Northern Arizona University. \u201cI\u2019m excited to see what they come up with,\u201d…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":11794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[131,132,128,129,130,127,24],"class_list":["post-11816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics","tag-2012-da14","tag-arizona-meteor-crater","tag-asteroid-research","tag-david-trilling","tag-international-planetary-defense-conference","tag-near-earth-objects","tag-northern-arizona-university"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}