The Rubin Observatory found 2,104 asteroids in just a few days. It could soon find millions more.
It was strangely emotional on Monday, June 23, while several grainy white spots rushed to my computer screen while the ambient rhythms burst in the background. These spots were part of a film that played during the Verra C. Rubin observatory First long -awaited release image Conference – And they each represented an asteroid which had just been discovered. It was like a very deep thing, and there are two reasons why.
First of all, to put it simply, with only a few nights of data, the team of the Rubin observatory was able to identify 2,104 unpublished asteroids in our solar system – of which seven are classified as almost land objects. (No, none should hit our planet. Don’t worry). For the context, there are around a million known asteroids in our cosmic district; In the coming years, Rubin could very well do a hike which represents up to five million.
“It is five times more than all astronomers of the world discovered in the past 200 years since the discovery of the first asteroid,” said željko Ivezić, deputy director of the investigation inherited from Rubin in space and time at the conference. “We can surpass two centuries of effort in just a few years.”
It’s amazing in itself – talk about an exemplary first impression – but there is always this second thing that makes the new data of asteroids of Rubin incredible.
They can be formatted as films.
Welcome to Hollywood, asteroids
For a certain context on Rubin, this observatory is our new eye on the brilliant ground on the universe and is located at the top of El Peñón de Cerro Pachón in Chile. He has the ability to imagine giant stretches in the sky using the largest digital camera in the world – and when I say giant, I mean giant.
In relation: 6 incredible objects hidden in the first image of Vera C. Rubin Rubin Observatory of the Observatory
One of his first images presented, for example, has a bunch of brilliant and misty galaxies of all shapes and sizes. It is difficult not to dream by looking at some beautiful lavender spirals which represent kingdoms comparable to our whole Milky Way.
But what you see below in this image is only 2% of Rubin’s full view:
The plan is that Rubin captures such massive images and high resolution in the south once every three nights for at least the next 10 years. You can therefore consider it as a super fast, super efficient and super-Thorough cosmic imaging. Indeed, these qualities are perfect for identifying some of the smallest details that drag in space around our planet: asteroids.
“We make films from the night sky to see two things: objects that move and objects that change brightness,” said Ivezić. “The objects that move come in two flavors. The stars of our galaxy move, and they move slowly. Many faster objects are asteroids.”
Zoom on one part of one of Rubin’s images, Ivezić stressed that there are in fact invisible photobombers present. He was talking about the Rubin asteroid software so kindly deleted from the main attraction (I mean, look at this spiral). However, the fact that these asteroids can be removed from an image means that they can be isolated with precision to start, which allows you to really focus on them if you wish – something that is not always possible with zipped ephemeral space objects.
In fact, it is extremely difficult to record an asteroid.
“Asteroids, they disappear after having an image of them,” said Ivezić, calling Rubin’s ability to image small orbit objects around the “unprecedented” sun.
In the Rubin image, Ivezić called to present the monitoring capacities of the asteroids of the observatory, the asteroid streaks are observed in different colors. Indeed, everyone corresponds to an exposure used to create the final image. You can consider it as different images assembled to create a final view of the trajectories of asteroids. And to go further, if you slap some of these data sets together, you can indicate an asteroid movement in the more static background of stars and galaxies – like a film.
This characteristic of Rubin should be enormous not only because it allowed scientists to better study asteroid movements and to discover new almost land objects, but also for the efforts of humanity in planetary defense.
Over the past two years, scientists have really started to wonder how we can protect our planet if an asteroid was heading for us.
Dart (Dart Double Asteroid Redirection Test of NASA – which sent a spacecraft to a death mission to crash on an asteroid and see if the object trajectory can be modified – was undoubtedly the feat which brought a planetary defense to the public eye. It would also be willing not to speak of all recent anxiety surrounding the asteroid of 2024 years, Who was powerful enough to even penetrate the jokes of a random comedy show in New York, I went to the headlines.
There was even an audience on asteroid security in May, owned by the American Committee for Space, Science and Technology, during which US representatives expressed their concern about the defense of asteroids, the main reductions in scientific financing of President Trump.
All this to say that I imagine that an advanced asteroid detector is welcome in the scientific community at the moment.
To really illustrate the ultimate promise of the adventures of asteroids from Rubin, Ivezić spoke of a simulation of all the asteroids that should orbit our sun.
“This blue donut is a simulation of all the asteroids we expect there,” he said. “All these new discoveries are in this narrow slice of this big donut. In two or three years, after starting the LSST later this year, we are going to sweep and discover all millions of asteroids.”
This article was initially published on Space.com.
