Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, November 23rd.  The sun will rise at 7:49.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 18 minutes, setting at 5:07.   The moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 6:45 this evening.

The Japanese announced last week that the Hyabusa sample container that landed in June after visiting the asteroid Itokawa contained 1,500 minute asteroid particles in the empty looking container.  The inside of the container was carefully scraped with a special spatula and came up with bits of the asteroid.  The Itokawa asteroid had been studied from earth and had been determined to be a stony asteroid, what they call a type S.  The two minerals found were olivine and pyroxene   Olivine is common on the earth, moon, meteorites and two of the comets we’ve visited.  Pyroxene is common to on the earth and meteorites.  Samples of the area where the capsule landed were taken to rule out contamination.

* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.