After waiting 160 years for an asteroid to be discovered from Ireland, two have been discovered just a fortnight apart. As Astronomy Ireland’s email news alert puts it, “That old adage about waiting for a bus comes to mind!”
Astronomy Ireland’s David Grennan detected the latest asteroid from his observatory in Raheny, on Dublin’s northside. It’s only the third asteroid to be discovered from Ireland, and is about 400,000 times fainter that the faintest star visible to the naked eye.
David’s breakthrough follows hot on the heels of the discovery earlier this month of another asteroid by Dave McDonald, one of Discover Science & Engineering’s Science Ambassadors.
Dave made his discovery from his home in Celbridge, Co Kildare, and David was part of the team that helped him to verify his find.
Radio interview
David will be talking about his feat on The Astronomy Ireland Radio Show on 11 November. The show will be available to download as an MP3 podcast from Astronomy Ireland’s website at www.astronomy.ie/AIRS.
You can also email your congratulations to David at skydiary[at]astronomy[dot]ie and learn more about how the two astronomers made their finds at Astro-Expo 2008.
Dave and David will be giving a public lecture about “Discovering Asteroids from Ireland” in the show, which takes place on Saturday 8 November in the new Science Gallery at TCD.
Learn more
Find out about Dave McDonald’s discovery and read his Science Ambassador profile
Learn more about Astro-Expo 2008
