Saturday morning stargazers may catch a glimpse of the 45 metre asteroid called DA14 as it passes over New Zealand on its 'near miss' flight past Earth. 

 

The asteroid, identified last year, will pass within 28,000km of Earth around 8.30am Saturday, NZT. The asteroid will pass closer to the planet than the orbit of some man-made satellites circling the Earth.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office has emphatically stated they "can accurately predict the asteroid's path with the observations obtained, and it is therefore known that there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth."

NASA has posted an animated projection of the flyby and further links here.

Carter Observatory programmes manager John Field told the Dominion Post that the asteroid will be visible to New Zealanders from 2am to sunrise on Saturday (16 Feb) through a telescope or a good pair of binoculars.

"It's pretty rare to see these, but now that we have better telescopes and more people hunting we're getting more reports than ever before," he said.

"Ten years ago, none of our telescopes could even spot them."

Auckland's Stardome astronomer Dr Grant Christie will  be tracking the asteroid at Stardome from very early on Saturday morning.

 

You can follow the trajectory of DA14 in realtime on Saturday morning for yourself at NASATV . 

First-born children have greater difficulty absorbing sugars into the body and have higher daytime blood pressure than children who have older siblings, according to new research.

Led by Prof Wayne Cutfield from the Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland, researchers documented a 21 percent drop in sensitivity to insulin, the hormone which controls blood sugar levels,  and slightly higher blood pressure among first-born children. These phenomena are known risk factors for conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life.

The findings were published this week in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

The authors theorise that the metabolic differences in younger siblings might be caused by physical changes in the mother's uterus during her first pregnancy. As a result of the changes, nutrient flow to the fetus tends to increase during subsequent pregnancies.

"Although birth order alone is not a predictor of metabolic or cardiovascular disease, being the first-born child in a family can contribute to a person's overall risk," Prof Cutfield said in a media release.

You can read more about the study and read a round-up of international coverage on the Science Media Centre website.  

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