Distance

Space is measured in three different ways: kilometers, Astronomical Units and light years. Each one is very different from the other. A kilometer is a metric unit of measurement equal to 1,000 meters. An Astronomical Unit is equal to 150 million kilometers. A light year is equal to almost 10 trillion kilometers. We use kilometers for walking,running or driving distances. AU is how you measure the distance between Earth and a planet. A light year is the speed of light and is used to count the greatest distances.

Hermes is only about 0.02 AU away from Earth. It is fairly close for an asteroid. It would be about 6 million kilometers and would take 222 years to get there. I think we could only get there if we had an extreme improvement of technology. But as if now could we get there, definitely not. 

Asteroid Formations

The asteroid has a very interesting way of forming. The first thing that happens is the gas and dust collect. Then small objects begin to form. This happens because of accretion and gravity. Accretion is the growth of an object because of the matter that collides with it and makes it bigger. It is very simalar to fusion. Finally when the large object can't accrete anymore because the planets Jupiter and Mars prevent objects from sticking together.

Is it a planet?

Pluto is not considered an official planet anymore.  Pluto is in the Kupier Belt, a circular ring of methane, ammonia and water ice chunks. Astronomers also found an object beyond Neptune larger than Pluto, Eris. Pluto and Eris have been named dwarf planets because they do not meet the 3 standards of a planet. The 3 standards each planet must meet are: 

- It needs to be in orbit around the sun

- It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape

- It needs to have "cleared the neighborhood" of its orbit

Pluto and Eris only meet 2 of these 3 standards. They miss the 3 because they are not the greatest object in it's orbit. Pluto 2320 km and that is only 0.07 times the mass of all the other objects in its orbit.

The Hermes Asteroid's Size

Hermes' diameter is .09 kilo meters (1000 yards). The Hermes asteroid can fit into the earth 14,173.5 times.

<------------ This is the Hermes Asteroid compared to Earth from a far. 

On Monday, October 26, my class and I went to the American Museum of Natural History. We went to four main points in the museum based on astronomy. The first place we went to in the museum was to the Hall of Meteors and Meteorites . The Hall ofMeteors and Meteorites was all about how meteors and meteorites were created and discovered. Most of the meteors and meteorites we saw which included; The Woman, The Dog and Ahnighito, were all from West Greenland all mainly found in 1894 or 1895. The second place we went was The Rose Center which contained a lot of information on the planets and the rest of the solar system. Then we saw a movie called The Big Bang. Immediately following we went through a sort of maze of the 13 billon years that followed the Big Bang. Afterward we went to a much longer movie called Journey To The Stars, which was about how stars, the Earth and Sun were all made. It was very interesting because it was in a dome shaped theater above you and it looked like it was right there happening in front of you. The first thing I learned was that meteorites and meteors are significantly different. The second think I learned is what kind of effect the Big Bang had over the solar system and our own home planet. The last thing was I learned what shooting stars actually are.

Being the depth of thought thinker I am, I still have 2 more significant questions:

1. How was the Hermes Asteroid created?

2. How did it get to where it is right now?

Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth' s Discovery of Hermes

Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth was the discoverer of the asteroid Hermes. Hermes was discovered on October 28th, 1937. He had taken a picture of the asteroid and after only 5 days he made his observations and called it a lost asteroid. Since he made his discovery, the science community has wanted to learn more and more about Hermes.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/69230_Hermes