Vera Rubin Observatory has already found thousands of new asteroids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgq2lcpkifg

In the midst of the millions of distant stars and galaxies captured in the first released images of the Vera C. Rubin observatory, there are thousands of asteroids ever seen before that whistle around the solar system.

“These two beautiful galaxies were photobombs by asteroids,” said željko Ivezić at the University of Washington in Seattle, presenting an image showing several asteroids passing the two galaxies on a spiral in a press point on June 23.

For only 10 hours of observation from the night sky, the telescope – located in the light air at the top of a mountain in the Chilean Andes – captured 2104 asteroids previously unknown. Among these, seven are on a trajectory that would pass near the earth, although none poses risk of hitting us, said Ivezić.

The telescope has not been mainly designed to detect almost land objects, but to conduct an investigation of a decade, expanding our vision of the whole universe. But the same qualities that make it useful for this purpose are also good for the detection of asteroids: “You have to scan the sky very quickly, with a very large field of vision, for a long time,” said Ivezić.

Asteroids were identified by scanning the same region of the sky and noting what moved. In a composite image Ivezić displayed during the briefing, asteroids appeared as colored streaks on a background of brilliant objects in a deeper space. This gives us a better image of our planetary district and its inhabitants. “They were not a surprise,” he said. “We have exquisite simulations.”

During its 10 -year investigation, the telescope should detect around 5 million new asteroids, interrupting the number identified over the centuries of previous research.

Any new detection will be reported daily at the center of the minor planet in the United States, which will analyze its orbital trajectories and identify all the objects that could constitute a threat to the land. “Within 24 hours, everyone in the world will know that there is a particular object that could be dangerous,” explains Ivezić.

Matthew Payne at the Minor Planet Center says that only about 40% of almost terrestrial objects large enough to build a threat have been found. The radical increase in the number of detections from the Vera Rubin Observatory will quickly find the others, he said.

The enormous increase in observations of other objects in the solar system – asteroids of the main belt between Mars and Jupiter to objects further beyond the orbit of Neptune – should also give us a new overview of our immediate cosmic district. “He will generally revolutionize the science of the solar system,” explains Payne.