The eyes of many astronomers -- and the eyes of their telescopes -- were aimed at the asteroid 2005 YU55 a few days ago, when it passed the Earth at the relatively close distance of about 320,000 km. One of those eyes was actually in space as well: NASA's Swift satellite. This spacecraft was designed to look at the sky in the ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma rays, all high-energy forms of light emitted by the most violent events in the universe: exploding stars and gamma-ray bursts. But the Sun emits UV, and rock can reflect this light, too. So Swift observed YU55 as it passed us, and got this very interesting footage of it, what I think is the coolest I've seen so far:
[You can also watch it on YouTube
if you prefer.] Pretty neat, and by looking at the rock at different wavelengths, we can learn about its ...
