The Rubin Observatory found 2,104 asteroids in just a few days. It could soon find millions more

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It was strangely emotional on Monday (June 23), as many of the popular white spots on my computer screen while the surrounding rhythms were beating in the background. These stains were part of a film he played during the largely observed Vera C I felt as if to witness something very deep, and there are two reasons.

First of all, simply, with a few nights of data, the Robin Observatory team managed to determine 2,104 before Asteroids In our solar system-seven of them are classified as semi-Earth’s organisms. (No, no one is expected to hit our planet. Don’t worry). For context, there are approximately a million people known as the Kafid in our cosmic life; During the next few years, Robin can raise this number up to five million.

“This is more than five times from all astronomers in the world who have been discovered during the past 200 years since the discovery of the first asteroid,” said željko Ivezić, the deputy director of the old survey of Robin for the place and time. “We can surpass two pods of effort in just two years.”

This is amazing in itself – talked about The first model impression – But there is still this second thing that makes the new asteroid data from Robin incredible.

It can be coordinated as movies.

Welcome to Hollywood, asteroids

For some context about Robin, this observatory is our wonderful new eyes based on the universe, and is located in El Peak of Cerro Pachón in Chile. It has the ability to pictures of the inhabitants of the giant sky using the largest digital camera in the world – and when I say a giant, I mean giant.

One of the first presented images, for example, features a set of incandescent glows of all shapes and sizes. It is difficult not to dream of vigilance when looking at a couple of beautiful lavender spirals that represent worlds similar to our way in the entire Milky Way.

But what you see below in this image is only 2 % of Robin’s full show:

The plan is that Robin take these huge high -precision images for the southern sky once every three nights at least in the next ten years. So you can consider it a high -speed, high -efficiency and supercological image. In fact, these qualities are ideal for discovering some of the smallest details that fall behind the space surrounding our planet: asteroids.

“We make films from the night sky to watch two things: the things that move and the things that change the brightness,” Evic said. “Things that move in flavors come. The stars are in our movement in the galaxy, and they move slowly. Agencies are much faster are asteroids.”

Take a small part of a Robin image, Ivezić indicated that there are already invisible pictures. He was talking about the asteroid lines that prefer to remove the Robin program from the main attraction (I mean, see this spiral). However, the fact that these asteroids can be removed from an image that means that they can be insulated accurately to start with them, which makes it really possible to focus on them if you want it – which is not always possible with x -offs.

In fact, it is extremely difficult to register an asteroid at all.

“The asteroids disappear after you get one picture of them,” said Ivic, describing Robin’s ability to photograph the small things that revolve around the sun “unprecedented.”

In the image of Robin, Ivezić is called to display the potential of asteroids tracking in the observatory, the asteroid lines are seen in different colors. This is because each of them corresponds to exposure to one used to create the final image. You can think of it as different images stitched together to create a final offer for asteroid paths. To make things forward, if you slap a few of these data collections together, you can refer to the asteroid’s movement on the most stable background of stars and galaxies – like the movie.

This feature should be of huge Robin not only because it will allow scientists to better study the asteroid’s movements and discover new things close to Earth, but also for humanitarian efforts in planetary defense.

Another tool to protect the Earth

Over the past two years, scientists have already started asking how to protect our planet if the asteroid is on our way.

NASA is very successful She (Test of the double asteroid redirect) – which sent a spacecraft on the mission of death to improve the asteroid and know whether the organism can be changed – it can be said that the fence that brought the planetary defense brought to the public eye. It would also be mentioned to mention all the last concern surrounding the asteroid 2024 YR4, which was strong enough to penetrate the jokes of a random comic show in New York City, went to the time when headlines are released. 2024 YR4 briefly had a possibility of turning the head to hit our planet before this possibility fell into something.

There was even hearing About the safety of the asteroid in May, which was held by the American House of Representatives for Space, Science and Technology, in which the representatives of the United States expressed concern that the defense of the asteroid may be affected by the reduction in the funding of President Trump.

All this means that I imagine that the modern asteroid detector is a great welcome in the scientific community at the present time.

To clarify the deadline for the adventure of Robin asteroid, Ivezić put forward a simulation of all asteroids that are expected to revolve around our sun.

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“This blue cake is a simulation of all the asteroids we expect there,” he said. “All these new discoveries were found in this narrow slide of this large cake. Within two or three years, after we started LSST later this year, we will discover and discover all millions of asteroids.”