Aspiring student astronomers, physicists or simply appreciative stargazers need not gaze out into the infinities of space through a telescope to find the perfect extracurricular activity — an out-of-this-world option is available in ASTRO, the new campus astronomy club. The group is becoming an official student organization this semester, according to ASTRO Club President Abbey Hazen ’24.
Another new piece of the final frontier is now within humanity’s grasp. On Wednesday, Oct. 11, NASA revealed images of its first-ever asteroid sample returned to Earth, The New York Times reported. The fragments were collected from the seven-year-long OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016. The goal of the mission was to collect materials from the 4.5 billion-year-old near-Earth asteroid Bennu, according to CNN.
A traveler from another star, a comet named 2I/ Borisov, was identified this past summer by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov. 2I/Borisov will reach the closest point to the sun in its trajectory, its perihelion, on Dec. 7. at a distance of about 180 million miles, and will be closest to Earth on Dec. 29.
