SAASST News

Thursday, 12 November 2020 10:28

SAASST NEO Lecture

The Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Technology organized on Nov. 11, 2020, its bi-weekly lecture on NEO. The lecture was given by Mr. Mohamed Talafha, SAASST research assistant at the Sharjah Optical Observatory. Mr. Talafha gave an introduction to near-Earth-objects, their classification, and the different methods of observations. Few worldwide observatories are dedicated to such NEO observations to the difficulty of detecting them because of their small sizes.

The telescopes at the Sharjah Optical Observatory can trace some big ones, and during the past couple of years, several of these objects were imaged. NEOs are the remnants of our solar system that were left after forming the Sun, planets, moons, and anything else. Some of these NEOs are known as NEA (Near-Earth-Asteroids) or NEC (Near-Earth-Comets). These NEOs have very low albedos, which make them difficult to observe with telescopes. Spacecrafts have visited some of these NEA and NEC. A small sample of one NEO was returned to Earth in 2010.

The video of the lecture can be checked out following the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6yktfWkQXw