433 Eros
Encyclopedia
433 Eros is a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) discovered in 1898, and the first asteroid to be orbited by a probe (in 2000). It is an S-type asteroid
approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size, the second-largest NEA after 1036 Ganymed
, and belongs to the Amor
group.
Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid
, the first known to come within the orbit of Mars
. Objects in such an orbit can remain there for only a few hundred million years before the orbit is perturbed
by gravitational interactions. Dynamical integrations suggest that Eros may evolve into an Earth-crosser
within as short an interval as 2 million years, and has a roughly 50% chance of doing so over a time scale of 108–109 years. It is a potential Earth
impactor, believed to be larger than the impactor that created the Chicxulub Crater
that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The NEAR Shoemaker
probe visited Eros twice, first with a 1998 flyby
, and then by orbiting it in 2000 when it extensively photographed its surface. On February 12, 2001, at the end of its mission, it landed on the asteroid's surface using its maneuvering jets.
The rarely used adjectival form of the name Eros is Erotian (icon). Eros is pronounced icon and the Greek
is Ἔρως. It is named after the Greek god
of love
, Eros.
Surface gravity
depends on the distance from a spot on the surface to the center of a body's mass. The Erotian surface gravity varies greatly, since Eros is not a sphere but an elongated peanut-shaped (or potato- or shoe-shaped) object. The daytime temperature on Eros can reach about 100 °C at perihelion. Nighttime measurements fall near -150 °C. Eros's density is 2,400 kg/m3, about the same as the density of Earth's crust. It rotates once every 5.27 hours.
NEAR scientists have found that most of the larger rocks strewn across Eros were ejected from a single crater in a meteor collision approximately 1 billion years ago. This impact may also be responsible for the 40 percent of the Erotian surface that is devoid of craters smaller than 0.5 kilometers across. It was originally thought that the debris thrown up by the collision filled in the smaller craters. An analysis of crater densities over the surface indicates that the areas with lower crater density are within 9 kilometers of the impact point. Some of the lower density areas were found on the opposite side of the asteroid but still within 9 kilometers.
It is theorized that seismic shockwaves propagated through the asteroid, shaking smaller craters into rubble. Since Eros is irregularly shaped, a 9-kilometer straight line through the asteroid can reach locations that would be further away if travelling across the surface, thus leading to the uneven pattern of crater density on the surface.
As one of the larger near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), Eros has played a significant role in history. It was discovered on the same night (13 August 1898) by Gustav Witt
in Berlin and Auguste Charlois
at Nice. Witt was taking a 2-hour exposure of Beta Aquarii
to secure astrometric positions of asteroid 185 Eunike
.
During the opposition of 1900–1901, a worldwide program was launched to make parallax
measurements of the asteroid to determine the solar parallax (or distance to the sun), with the results published in 1910 by Arthur Hinks of Cambridge
. A similar program was then carried out, during a closer approach, in 1930–1931 by Harold Spencer Jones
. The value obtained by this program was considered definitive until 1968, when greater faith was placed in radar
and dynamical parallax
methods.
Eros was one of the first asteroids to be visited by a spacecraft, and the first to be orbited and soft-landed on. NASA
spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker
entered orbit around Eros in 2000, and came to rest on its surface in 2001.
, with a visual magnitude
of +8.1. During rare oppositions, every 81 years, such as in 1975 and 2056, Eros can reach a magnitude of +7.0, which is brighter than Neptune and brighter than any main-belt asteroid except 4 Vesta and, rarely, 2 Pallas and 7 Iris
. Under this condition, the asteroid actually appears to stop, but unlike the normal condition for a body in heliocentric conjunction with the Earth, it never appears to be retrograde. Its synodic period of over 846 earth days is among the largest of any body in the Solar System.
, he had the right to claim ownership of any celestial body that he made use of; he claimed he had designated Eros a spacecraft parking facility and wished to charge NASA
a parking and storage fee of twenty cents per year for NEAR Shoemaker. An expert in extraterrestrial real estate
issues, Virgiliu Pop
, responded by using the same novelty-deed registry Nemitz had used for Eros to claim ownership of the Sun, stating:
Nemitz's case was dismissed and an appeal denied.
S-type asteroid
S-type asteroids are of a stony composition, hence the name. Approximately 17% of asteroids are of this type, making it the second most common after the C-type.-Characteristics:...
approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size, the second-largest NEA after 1036 Ganymed
1036 Ganymed
1036 Ganymed is the largest Amor asteroid, at about 32 km in diameter. It was discovered by Walter Baade on October 23, 1924, and is named after Ganymede, the Trojan prince turned god whom Zeus designated the cupbearer to the Greek gods...
, and belongs to the Amor
Amor asteroid
The Amor asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after the asteroid 1221 Amor. They approach the orbit of the Earth from beyond, but do not cross it. Most Amors do cross the orbit of Mars...
group.
Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid
Mars-crosser asteroid
A Mars-crosser is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars. The known numbered Mars-crossers are listed here. They include the two numbered Mars trojans 5261 Eureka and ....
, the first known to come within the orbit of Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. Objects in such an orbit can remain there for only a few hundred million years before the orbit is perturbed
Perturbation (astronomy)
Perturbation is a term used in astronomy in connection with descriptions of the complex motion of a massive body which is subject to appreciable gravitational effects from more than one other massive body....
by gravitational interactions. Dynamical integrations suggest that Eros may evolve into an Earth-crosser
Earth-crosser asteroid
An Earth-crosser is a near-Earth asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Earth as observed from the ecliptic pole of Earth's orbit. The known numbered Earth-crossers are listed here. Those Earth-crossers whose semi-major axes are smaller than Earth's are Aten asteroids; the remaining ones are Apollo...
within as short an interval as 2 million years, and has a roughly 50% chance of doing so over a time scale of 108–109 years. It is a potential Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
impactor, believed to be larger than the impactor that created the Chicxulub Crater
Chicxulub Crater
The Chicxulub crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named...
that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The NEAR Shoemaker
NEAR Shoemaker
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker , renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a...
probe visited Eros twice, first with a 1998 flyby
Flyby
Flyby may refer to:* Flypast or flyover, a celebratory display or ceremonial flight* Planetary flyby, a type of interplanetary spacecraft mission* Gravity assist, a spaceflight maneuver* "Fly by II", a single released by the UK band Blue...
, and then by orbiting it in 2000 when it extensively photographed its surface. On February 12, 2001, at the end of its mission, it landed on the asteroid's surface using its maneuvering jets.
The rarely used adjectival form of the name Eros is Erotian (icon). Eros is pronounced icon and the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
is Ἔρως. It is named after the Greek god
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
of love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, Eros.
Physical characteristics
Surface gravity
The surface gravity, g, of an astronomical or other object is the gravitational acceleration experienced at its surface. The surface gravity may be thought of as the acceleration due to gravity experienced by a hypothetical test particle which is very close to the object's surface and which, in...
depends on the distance from a spot on the surface to the center of a body's mass. The Erotian surface gravity varies greatly, since Eros is not a sphere but an elongated peanut-shaped (or potato- or shoe-shaped) object. The daytime temperature on Eros can reach about 100 °C at perihelion. Nighttime measurements fall near -150 °C. Eros's density is 2,400 kg/m3, about the same as the density of Earth's crust. It rotates once every 5.27 hours.
NEAR scientists have found that most of the larger rocks strewn across Eros were ejected from a single crater in a meteor collision approximately 1 billion years ago. This impact may also be responsible for the 40 percent of the Erotian surface that is devoid of craters smaller than 0.5 kilometers across. It was originally thought that the debris thrown up by the collision filled in the smaller craters. An analysis of crater densities over the surface indicates that the areas with lower crater density are within 9 kilometers of the impact point. Some of the lower density areas were found on the opposite side of the asteroid but still within 9 kilometers.
It is theorized that seismic shockwaves propagated through the asteroid, shaking smaller craters into rubble. Since Eros is irregularly shaped, a 9-kilometer straight line through the asteroid can reach locations that would be further away if travelling across the surface, thus leading to the uneven pattern of crater density on the surface.
History
As one of the larger near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), Eros has played a significant role in history. It was discovered on the same night (13 August 1898) by Gustav Witt
Carl Gustav Witt
Carl Gustav Witt was a German astronomer who used to work at the popular observatory of the Urania astronomical association of Berlin ....
in Berlin and Auguste Charlois
Auguste Charlois
Auguste Honoré Charlois was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working in Nice.His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirza in 1887...
at Nice. Witt was taking a 2-hour exposure of Beta Aquarii
Beta Aquarii
Beta Aquarii is a triple star in the constellation Aquarius. It has the traditional name Sadalsuud, from an Arabic expression سعد السعود sa‘d al-su‘ūd, the "luck of lucks"...
to secure astrometric positions of asteroid 185 Eunike
185 Eunike
185 Eunike is a dark and very large main-belt asteroid, with an approximate diameter of 157 kilometres. It has a primitive carbonaceous composition....
.
During the opposition of 1900–1901, a worldwide program was launched to make parallax
Parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. The term is derived from the Greek παράλλαξις , meaning "alteration"...
measurements of the asteroid to determine the solar parallax (or distance to the sun), with the results published in 1910 by Arthur Hinks of Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
. A similar program was then carried out, during a closer approach, in 1930–1931 by Harold Spencer Jones
Harold Spencer Jones
Sir Harold Spencer Jones KBE FRS was an English astronomer. Although born "Jones", his surname became "Spencer Jones"....
. The value obtained by this program was considered definitive until 1968, when greater faith was placed in radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
and dynamical parallax
Dynamical Parallax
In astronomy, the distance to a visual binary star may be estimated from the masses of its two components, the size of their orbit, and the period of their revolution around one another...
methods.
Eros was one of the first asteroids to be visited by a spacecraft, and the first to be orbited and soft-landed on. NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker
NEAR Shoemaker
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker , renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a...
entered orbit around Eros in 2000, and came to rest on its surface in 2001.
Visibility from Earth
On January 31, 2012, Eros will pass the Earth at 0.17867 AU, about 70 times the distance to the MoonLunar distance (astronomy)
In astronomy, a lunar distance is a measurement of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The average distance from Earth to the Moon is 384,400 kilometers...
, with a visual magnitude
Apparent magnitude
The apparent magnitude of a celestial body is a measure of its brightness as seen by an observer on Earth, adjusted to the value it would have in the absence of the atmosphere...
of +8.1. During rare oppositions, every 81 years, such as in 1975 and 2056, Eros can reach a magnitude of +7.0, which is brighter than Neptune and brighter than any main-belt asteroid except 4 Vesta and, rarely, 2 Pallas and 7 Iris
7 Iris
7 Iris is a large main-belt asteroid. Among the S-type asteroids, it ranks fifth in geometric mean diameter after Eunomia, Juno, Amphitrite and Herculina....
. Under this condition, the asteroid actually appears to stop, but unlike the normal condition for a body in heliocentric conjunction with the Earth, it never appears to be retrograde. Its synodic period of over 846 earth days is among the largest of any body in the Solar System.
Legal controversy
In an experimental legal case, Eros was claimed as property by Gregory W. Nemitz of OrbDev. Nemitz argued that, according to the homestead principleHomestead principle
The homestead principle in law is the concept that one can gain ownership of a natural thing that currently has no owner by using it or building something out of it...
, he had the right to claim ownership of any celestial body that he made use of; he claimed he had designated Eros a spacecraft parking facility and wished to charge NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
a parking and storage fee of twenty cents per year for NEAR Shoemaker. An expert in extraterrestrial real estate
Extraterrestrial real estate
Extraterrestrial real estate is land on other planets or natural satellites or parts of space that is sold either through organizations or by individuals. Ownership of extraterrestrial real estate is not recognised by any authority...
issues, Virgiliu Pop
Virgiliu Pop
Virgiliu Pop is a Romanian space lawyer and author. He has claimed ownership of the Sun in order to make a point about extraterrestrial property rights claims that he argues are bogus....
, responded by using the same novelty-deed registry Nemitz had used for Eros to claim ownership of the Sun, stating:
Nemitz's case was dismissed and an appeal denied.
See also
- Eros in fiction
- List of geological features on 433 Eros
External links
- NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft
- NEAR image of the day archive
- Movie: NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft landing
- The Eros Project (OrbDev's attempts at litigation over their property claim)
- 3D VRML 433 Eros Model
- NEODys (saved output file from 2007) showing distance and magnitude Ephemerides for Eros during rare oppositions
- The Chicxulub Debate In relation to the K-T extinction.
- Dearborn Observatory Records, Northwestern University Archives, Evanston, Illinois Notations as to historical archived work on asteroid 433 Eros.