Astronomy college students journey the world to see deep into house

“Through the International Occultation Timing Organization, we share our findings with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and they update their public Horizons database of asteroid orbits with the data we collect,” stated Teddy Oakey, fourth-year astronomy and physics main within the College of Arts & Sciences, in addition to the group’s president.

The Occultation Group shaped a number of years in the past for infrequent asteroid observations. Recently, it obtained a bit extra organized.

In spring of 2024, the Occultation Group registered as a contracted unbiased group and took its operations to the subsequent stage. By that fall, the group was observing a number of occultations every week after which a number of occultations each single evening, Oakey stated.

Mapping these celestial paths takes members throughout the nation and across the globe. They’ve visited practically two dozen states together with Australia, Mexico and South Africa. The group has a visit deliberate to United Arab Emirates, to trace an asteroid which is a topic of a fly-by by the UAE spacecraft MBR Explorer, set to launch in 2028.

“Stellar occultation measurements are the most valuable tools to learn about asteroids before spacecraft fly-bys,” Oakey stated. “MBR Explorer is set to visit seven main-belt asteroids, many of which have no prior characterization. Our team led three expeditions to observe one such uncharacterized asteroid, creatively called (59980) 1999 SG6, from this sample.”

Not all remark factors are unique. Recently, 4 college students arrange two telescopes on the Astronomy Building as the daylight pale. The telescopes have been tethered to laptops on folding tables that recorded the asteroids’ paths. Four extra undergraduates appeared out of the darkness, a number of the group’s roughly 20 members, to help monitoring asteroid sightings, a few of which solely final a second.

As darkness deepened, laptop computer screens illuminated anxious faces as observers checked whether or not their monitoring was profitable. 

“We learned how to calculate when they’re going to happen,” Oakey stated. “And so once we did that, we realized there’s actually several pretty solid chances to see these almost every night. So once we learned how to do it, it was just a matter of going outside and actually configuring a telescope. There are about 500,000 asteroids with orbits certain enough to generate predictions, and we observe about 40 on every clear night.”

Keya Garg, a third-year laptop engineering main, flicked her fingers over the keyboard whereas Oakey secured the cable connection to the telescope, ensuring the 2 machines talked to one another. 

To Garg, raised within the United Arab Emirates, astronomy was a passion, however her curiosity blossomed at UVA.

“I never thought I’d be out chasing asteroids in the middle of the night, but I love every second of it,” she stated.

It can be necessary science, in response to Oakey.

“We help to keep track of all of the asteroids in the solar system through our observations,” Oakey stated. “This ‘keeping track’ is especially relevant when we study potentially hazardous asteroids, which have a non-negligible chance of impacting Earth within several hundred years. Our observations keep the orbits for these certain.”

Their analysis additionally helps in understanding asteroid composition.

“The profiling of an asteroid’s shape can tell us if we think it is a pile of rubble and boulders like the asteroid Bennu or a solid rock like Ida,” Oakey stated. “The composition then informs us of the conditions that created the asteroid. By surveying the entire population of small bodies from Earth to Neptune and beyond, we begin to understand more clearly the conditions which birthed the solar system.”

Andrey Moore, a third-year astrophysics and laptop science main, is the mechanic.

“I was elected as secretary, but effectively, I fix things,” Moore stated. “As secretary, I keep the place organized, and I work on our spreadsheets and file system, but the thing that I really like doing is fixing things when they break.”

For Oakey, the expertise has taught resilience.

“I have learned how to handle failure, because it can be really discouraging sometimes,” Oakey stated. “We worked for six months for an occultation in South Africa, transporting all of our gear, all of our students, and we get there and it’s snowing on the night we needed to be clear.”