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The University of Western Australia's new Zadko telescope has discovered a new asteroid - a 4km wide rock orbiting in the outer reaches of our solar system.

Curtin University of Technology Honours student, Mick Todd, used the UWA facility to make the unexpected discovery while searching the sky for potentially hazardous asteroids.

Asteroids are big rocks, ranging from metres to kilometres in size, that cross the Earth's path around the Sun and occasionally hit the Earth. They are difficult to spot because they move fast and they are very faint.

Mick was practising his search techniques when he captured an image of an unidentified faint object. After checking the major astronomical data-bases, it became clear that the Zadko Telescope had imaged a new asteroid. Unlikely comets, asteroids are numbered not named. So instead of a Mick Todd asteroid, it will be known as asteroid 2009 FH19.

Located about 125-400 million km from Earth, the asteroid has an apparent magnitude (brightness) of about 19.5, making it about 250,000 times fainter than the faintest stars visible to the naked eye.

Zadko Project Leader, Associate Professor David Coward, said: "To put this in perspective, the asteroid image obtained by the Zadko Telescope is the same as detecting a grain of sand from 130 km away."

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of rocks and asteroids discovered by increasingly more sophisticated telescopes. This data is contributing to a global quest to understand the composition of the Solar System.

"In the next 6 months Mick plans to search for asteroids and rocks lurking closer to Earth. Some of these are so close that impacts can occur only hours after discovery," said Associate Professor Coward.

Curtin Associate Professor Marjan Zadnik said that such collaboration between UWA and Curtin has resulted in students like Mick Todd making world class discoveries.

Media references

Assoc Professor David Coward (+61 8) 6488 4563
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs) (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716
Julia Nicol (Curtin Public Affairs)  (+61 8) 9266 7711  /  (+61 4) 09 202 134