{"id":110686,"date":"2020-06-30T11:01:16","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T15:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=110686"},"modified":"2020-09-30T14:57:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T18:57:43","slug":"national-asteroid-day-a-celebration-of-mysterious-small-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/national-asteroid-day-a-celebration-of-mysterious-small-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"National Asteroid Day: A Celebration of Mysterious Small Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine a celestial body larger than the Statue of Liberty skyrocketing past Earth with enough energy to flatten a city. Since 2011 this has only happened once, and it occurred earlier this month. Asteroids are small bodies, often made up of rock, that exist in the solar system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Where did they come from? Scientists speculate that they were minor planets at the birth of the solar system characterized by their misshapen and miniature figures. Astronomer and Catholic Priest Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first of these small bodies in 1801 when he found a light moving in the sky just between Jupiter and Mars. After several more sightings, astronomers realized that they must have discovered something new.<\/p>\n

Asteroids come in many sizes from as small as a few feet across to several hundred miles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Asteroids come in many sizes from as small as a few feet across to several hundred miles, and can be made up of different materials: 75 percent are carbon-based, 17 percent are silicon-based and 8 percent are miscellaneous but mostly metallic. There are 958,963 known asteroids orbiting the sun in our solar system, with hundreds more being discovered every month. Even though there are so many asteroids their total mass is relatively puny, equating only about 5 percent the mass of Earth\u2019s moon.<\/p>\n

As we celebrate Asteroid day today (June 30), UCF is over the moon about its eight faculty members who have asteroids named after them as a recognition of their contribution to their planetary science research.<\/p>\n