Did you know that asteroids come in three types? They can be silicone-based, carbon-based or metal-based.

If you had to have a conversation with Prof. Charles Galdies about his observatory, you would hear one, or ten fun asteroid facts, but you would also get an insight into the very useful research he’s conducting through this observatory.

Prof. Galdies is part of the Institute of Earth Systems, so he’s always been keen on observing, but he also observes … celestial objects.

He started dabbling in observational astronomy when he was around 10 years of age, when he got his very first telescope from his own pocket money. Now he has two robotic telescopes on his very own roof. He says he’s also interested in photometric analysis, or in other words, he focuses on how the light from the fixture surrounds the area of coverage of an object, in order to study the orbital period of asteroids.

Observational astronomy, you say? Why are individual observations important in the world of astronomy?

Observational astronomy is concerned with recording data about the observable universe, and this is contrast with the theoretical astronomy, which is mainly concerned with the calculation of the measurable implications of physical models.

The importance of observational astronomy lies in better understanding the universe we live in through the measurement and testing out of hypotheses about astronomical objects.

Probes have landed on asteroids before, as of 2001, and since then, there have been three other occasions, that have taken samples of the material they are made out of, to learn more about their composition. We know they’re very rich in certain minerals.

Just around a year ago, Prof. Galdies travelled with some colleagues to the Teide Observatory in Tenerife, to observe, through a huge telescope, a group of asteroids, the Coronis asteroids. There are 6,000 of them, roughly 40km in size. They were formed following a cataclysmic collision of two planets, which resulted in a fragmentation of sorts.

The data gathered from those observations can be found on Prof. Galdies' published work online.