In Search Of the Vulcans

jonerik writes: "No, not those Vulcans. The BBC has this article on the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) search for the Vulcanoids, a belt of perhaps a few hundred small asteroids (perhaps between one and 25 kilometers in diameter) theorized to exist inside of Mercury's orbit around the sun. Because of their closeness to the sun and small size, the asteroids - if they exist - would be hard to observe from the ground. To that end, a NASA F/A-18 is being used to conduct a search 'of the twilight sky near the Sun that is far darker and clearer than can be obtained from the ground,' says Dr. Dan Durda of SwRI. According to the article, 'The camera used in the latest search...is trained on the region of space close to the Sun after the star has dipped below the Earth's horizon. The camera grabs twilight images at a rate of 60 frames a second.' The researchers hope to have a better idea of whether or not the Vulcanoids exist in another month or two."

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Too much sun?

[Tablizer]

Wouldn't the radiation pressure from the sun at that distance de-stablizes the orbits?

It is theorized that sunlight even interferes with asteroids just beyond Mars if they have certain spins or colors. (Remember that /. story about painting asteroids to keep them from hitting Earth?) If the sun can mess up orbits out there, then near Mercury it must be something like 1000 times as strong.

Camera on Space Shuttle

[Ethidium]

The camera used in the latest search was originally conceived for the space shuttle.

So why aren't they using it on one of our fine fleet of space shuttles? Or better yet, send it up to the ISS for a bit. Sure, that's expensive, but so is fueling and maintaining an F/A-18, paying a highly trained pilot (and her life insurance!), fitting the camera onto the plane before the flight, and dismounting it after.