Oh’s Zany World

Asteroid North Dakota

February 17, 2009 on 7:39 pm | In Oh Yeah, The World | No Comments

North Dakota has finally come of age.  Who would have thought that we could look at the skies one day and say, yes sir, Asteroid North Dakota is out there going around the sun somewhere between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Asteroid Belt.

 

It was named but University of North Dakota doctoral candidate, Vishnu Reddy, who discovered it. 

 

While a doctoral candidate in North Dakota, he has to go to other states to look at the sky though a big observatory telescope as North Dakota has none. While still being a candidate for a graduate degree, of which he hopes to complete his studies this spring.  He has been very busy scanning the skies and has found 18 to 22 asteroids, depending on the source and a supernova. One asteroid of which was named for his native India.

 

He discovered this one in when he was star gazing in Arizona. And he chose to name it Asteroid North Dakota to honor the state and to bring to attention the fact ,that North Dakota has no big telescopes. Even though as he points out that the state because of lack of lots of people would make a wonderful place to have a big telescope.

 

Of course the questions we all want to know, is how big is it? Where is it at? And is it going to crash into North Dakota?

 

The answers lie blowing in the wind. Though roughly it is a couple of miles in length which means conceivably it is somewhat smaller when it is measured the by its width. It has a surface temperature of about 170 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit? Not sure of the temperature scale used. Though in any case it is somewhat cooler then the usual low’s, North Dakota normally experiences. While it is traveling at several thousand kilometers an hour it some 270 million miles from North Dakota and is currently in a holding pattern that present no short term or even long term threat to North Dakota.

What a relief!

 

If you want to see it you will need at least a 20 inch telescope to see it as a dot in the sky.

 

Hope you have many happy years of star gazing Mr. Reddy. And I hope you inspire others to star gaze too.

 

OH

 

Copyright 2009