Virtual Telescope from Data Mining

Atomic Snarl writes: "The ASTROVIRTEL project is mining a 7 Terabyte archive from NASA, ESA, and others for all things astronomical. One recent discovery is a new Kupier Belt object larger than asteroid Ceres. APOD story here, ESO press release here. They're looking for more research projects, too. Just the thing for all those spare cycles on your G4 Cube... ;-)"

Comments

"Historic" findings

[mfarah]

This is way cool. The idea of looking for previous sightings of newly discovered stuff has an enormous potential.

Asteroid 2001 KX76 is even larger than Pluto's moon Charon (diameter 1150 km), adding fuel to the discussions concerning Pluto's status as a "major" or "minor" planet.

I heavily suspect that there are several Pluto-sized objects in the KB waiting to be discovered. This newest finding has changed my mind: I was a stubborn "Pluto is a planet" supporter, now I think it's not.