{"id":17209,"date":"2024-05-01T17:50:49","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T09:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/asteroid-hunters-say-theyve-found-27500-new-prospects-in-search-for-space-rocks\/"},"modified":"2024-05-01T17:50:49","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T09:50:49","slug":"asteroid-hunters-say-theyve-found-27500-new-prospects-in-search-for-space-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/asteroid-hunters-say-theyve-found-27500-new-prospects-in-search-for-space-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid hunters say they\u2019ve found 27,500 new prospects in search for space rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This visualization shows the solar system trajectories of asteroids discovered by ADAM and THOR. (Credit: B612 Asteroid Institute \/ Univ. of Wash. DiRAC Institute \/ OpenSpace Project)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A team of asteroid hunters that includes researchers at the University of Washington says it has identified 27,500 new, high-confidence asteroid discovery candidates \u2014 not by making fresh observations of the night sky, but by sifting through archives of astronomical data.<\/p>\n

The weeks-long database search was conducted by the Asteroid Institute, a program of the nonprofit B612 Foundation, in partnership with UW\u2019s DiRAC Institute and Google Cloud.<\/p>\n

The two institutes developed a program called THOR, which stands for \u201cTracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery.\u201d THOR runs on a cloud-based, open-source platform known as ADAM (\u201cAsteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping\u201d). The program can analyze the positions of millions of moving points of light observed in the sky over a given period of time, and link those points together in ways that are consistent with orbital paths.<\/p>\n

Google Cloud\u2019s Office of the CTO collaborated with the Asteroid Institute to fine-tune its algorithms for Google Cloud. The project analyzed 5.4 billion observations drawn from the NOIRLab Source Catalog Data Release 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is exciting is that we are using electrons in data centers, in addition to the usual photons in telescopes, to make astronomical discoveries,\u201d Ed Lu, executive director of the Asteroid Institute, said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Most of the 27,500 asteroid discovery candidates are in the main belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But the candidates also include more than 100 apparent near-Earth asteroids.<\/p>\n

\"Chart
The candidates identified by the Asteroid Institute and Google Cloud would represent a significant addition to the minor-planet database once the discoveries have been confirmed. (B612 ASteroid Institute Graphic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Asteroid Institute\u2019s long-term goal is to create an observational system that can flag potentially threatening near-Earth objects long before they approach our planet. Confirming the detections can be a laborious task, but the institute is exploring the use of Google\u2019s artificial-intelligence tools to streamline the process.<\/p>\n

Astronomers are expecting the flow of data to turn into a flood once the Vera C. Rubin Observatory begins science operations in Chile in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsteroid Institute results are more than exciting for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory: They may help us re-optimize our observing strategy and obtain gains for some science programs, such as cosmologically important supernovae explosions, equivalent to cloning another Rubin Observatory,\u201d said UW astronomer Zeljko Ivezic, who serves as the observatory\u2019s construction project director.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This visualization shows the solar system trajectories of asteroids discovered by ADAM and THOR. (Credit: B612 Asteroid Institute \/ Univ. of Wash. DiRAC Institute \/ OpenSpace Project) A team of asteroid hunters that includes researchers at the University of Washington says it has identified 27,500 new, high-confidence asteroid discovery candidates \u2014 not by making fresh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4504,1519,4505,4366,4506,1992,4368,4369],"class_list":["post-17209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroid-institute","tag-asteroids","tag-b612-foundation","tag-dirac-institute","tag-google-cloud","tag-near-earth-objects","tag-university-of-washington","tag-vera-rubin-observatory"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}