{"id":95608,"date":"2019-08-30T18:58:08","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T01:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/for-the-first-time-astronomers-catch-asteroid-in-the-act-of-changing-color"},"modified":"2019-08-30T18:58:08","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T01:58:08","slug":"for-the-first-time-astronomers-catch-asteroid-in-the-act-of-changing-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/for-the-first-time-astronomers-catch-asteroid-in-the-act-of-changing-color","title":{"rendered":"For the first time, astronomers catch asteroid in the act of changing color"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/for-the-first-time-astronomers-catch-asteroid-in-the-act-of-changing-color.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last December, scientists discovered an \u201cactive\u201d asteroid within the asteroid belt, sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The space rock, designated by astronomers as 6478 Gault, appeared to be leaving two trails of dust in its wake\u2014active behavior that is associated with comets but rarely seen in asteroids.<\/p>\n<p>While astronomers are still puzzling over the cause of Gault\u2019s comet-like activity, an MIT-led team now reports that it has caught the asteroid in the act of changing color, in the near-infrared spectrum, from red to blue. It is the first time scientists have observed a color-shifting asteroid, in real-time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was a very big surprise,\u201d says Michael Marsset, a postdoc in MIT\u2019s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). \u201cWe think we have witnessed the asteroid losing its reddish dust to space, and we are seeing the asteroid\u2019s underlying, fresh blue layers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last December, scientists discovered an \u201cactive\u201d asteroid within the asteroid belt, sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The space rock, designated by astronomers as 6478 Gault, appeared to be leaving two trails of dust in its wake\u2014active behavior that is associated with comets but rarely seen in asteroids. While astronomers are still puzzling [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}