thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 21/08/2026I got Pure Land once in an untracked attempt. 010
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 20/08/2026Tried this with 100 attempts, and obtained the following distribution: 1150
Reposted by @thunkii.bsky.socialastrafoxen @astrafoxen.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Last year I rewrote Wikipedia's article on Makemake and it's now featured on the front page!! i spent 2 months hyperfixating on this topic and doing all the research and writing. It was SO worth it :D Special thanks to @renerpho.bsky.social & others for reviewing it ^^ (1/12 thread) 🔭 #planetsci 58715
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 24/05/2026A thread of explanatory notes is in my thread from then: bsky.app/profile/thun... 030
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 24/05/2026After some minor fixes I made to the visualization of 1,509,413 asteroids, and their position in space as of last week, it's good to go for Wikipedia! commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:As... 1195
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 15/05/2026As before, here is a full res version: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:As...commons.wikimedia.org 061
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 15/05/2026Positions, sizes, and magnitudes of asteroids are derived from the JPL Small Bodies Database, with orbital elements integrated from the provided epoch (mostly November 2025). Planet positions are from DE440; coordinates are in the J2000 ecliptic, with the +x axis pointing to the vernal equinox. 161
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 15/05/2026We can also see that the plane of the main belt is tilted slightly away from Earth's orbit and closer to the Solar System's invariable plane. The same is true of the classical Kuiper belt. The biggest yellow dot between Earth and Mars's orbit is 433 Eros, visited by NEAR Shoemaker in 2001. 130
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 15/05/2026The side view of the asteroid belt (bottom) shows that it's more of a donut, though it is far emptier--space is big, and most asteroids are found several million km from each other. The pink Trojans can have high-inclination orbits, due to the stability of Jupiter's L4 and L5 Lagrange points. 130
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 15/05/2026Other categories of asteroids are harder to spot. The 'Hildas triangle' in purple results from a 3:2 orbital resonance keeping them away from Jupiter. Near-Earth asteroids in red and yellow tend to be much smaller but can pose a threat to Earth, as do various short-period comets (green). 140
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 15/05/2026There are more ways to visualize asteroids, such as their location in space today. Here are 1,509,413 of them, plotted to scale with each other (but not to the planets or their orbits). We can clearly see the main belt in white and Trojan asteroids in pink. 1104
Reposted by @thunkii.bsky.socialLuke Bones 🦴🦴 @lukemeister.bsky.social · 14/05/2026🧵 Link to high-resolution versions of inclination and eccentricity vs. semi-major axis at end of thread Proper elements from David Nesvorný's catalog www2.boulder.swri.edu/~davidn/Prop... David's paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...iopscience.iop.orgA Census before Rubin of Asteroid Families in the Main BeltA Census before Rubin of Asteroid Families in the Main Belt, Nesvorný, David 0145
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 14/05/2026These images got ate by compression. Full-size versions are on Commons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:As... commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:As...commons.wikimedia.org 161
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 14/05/2026Asteroid proper elements are from Nesvorný et al. 2025, www2.boulder.swri.edu/~davidn/Prop.... Diameters are derived from the JPL Small Bodies Database (SBDB) where available, or otherwise guessed from the absolute magnitude and mean albedo of each sub-belt.www2.boulder.swri.edu 181
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 14/05/2026Asteroids range in size from the four largest: Vesta (inner belt), Ceres and Pallas (mid belt), and Hygiea (outer belt), to millions of kilometer-size rocks that are barely one pixel across. If you look closely at top left of the inclination plot, you can see the small but bright Hungarias (orange). 181
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 14/05/2026Here's another graph, showing the eccentricity vs the semi-major axis. While most asteroids are ejected from the major resonances with Jupiter, forming the Kirkwood gaps, some are trapped there and gradually excited onto planet-crossing orbits. 181
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 14/05/2026This is a graph of the inclination vs semi-major axis (distance from the sun) of 1,249,051 asteroids in the asteroid belt. Using proper elements allows us to see the belt's fine structure, including asteroid families that are fragments of past collisions. Each asteroid is (roughly) to scale. 23611
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 03/04/2026actually closer to 414 m/s; this will occur at approximately 23:30 TDB on 6 April 010
thunkii.bsky.social @thunkii.bsky.social · 03/04/2026according to JPL Horizons, minimum speed in the Earth-centered inertial frame is about 416 m/s when it's swinging around the back side of the Moon. Basically the flyby speed cancels out the Moon's orbital speed. 110
