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Video Showing Half a Million Asteroid Discoveries
An anonymous reader writes "Since 1980 over a half million asteroids have been discovered, mostly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, now thanks to this video you can see this activity condensed into a few minutes. At full resolution it's a mesmerizing experience as new discoveries are added and the video makes it possible to see patterns in the discovery positions, for example a large number appear in line between Earth and Jupiter as astronomers started looking for smaller jovian moons after Voyagers visit to the system."
Celebrating 30 years of counting rocks in space. Here's looking at you, kid.
I removed the One ring, why does Sauron still taunt me?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
It's interesting how the video highlights the fact that the bulk of the asteroids seem to be discovered in a direction of the earth's orbit opposite the sun. Seems obvious when you think about it, but it really becomes apparent from watching the vid.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
I'm wondering why I see no conspicuous clustering at the trojan points of Earth and Venus. Are asteroids there harder to detect?
We don't need yet another new programming language. Let's just pick an existing language and fix its flaws.
Discoveries are observations. Most discoveries are near opposition. It's only for special reasons that some surveys have been looking in other directions: either things like WISE that are in the infrared and so have special restrictions about where they can point, or targeted searches for near-Earth objects. In you click on the video you can read all about it in the caption. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw
Double-click on the video to reach the YouTube page. To the right of the summary (left of the number of views) is a down-chevron icon. Click on that for the full description.
Its not that hard to understand, right?
Otherwise, if you are really dense you could have read the video descriptions:
Flashing points are discovery events, the rest are the orbits of the known objects.
And of course discoveries _require_ and observation (more than one, but that doesnt matter on that time scale). They even explain the reason for the patterns.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
If the video is showing meteors in their orbits it appears that we might have to question the validity of calling Mars and Earth planets. It looks like neither planet really meet the guideline of "clearing its neighborhood"...
This past couple of decades has certainly been an age of discovery that equals if not surpasses a similar expansion of knowledge about the universe that happened in the 15th-18th Centuries when knowledge about new continents and islands became common place throughout most of the world. Most of us have been doing mundane things and living our lives, but this is certainly something that deserves note. More planets are also being discovered, including asteroid belts in other star systems as well.
What isn't being said here is how big some of these objects that are being discovered now: Most of the new objects being discovered are about the size of a house or sometimes even smaller. They really aren't all that large, even though if one of them hit your house it would make a bad day for you.
In a couple cases, there have been objects "rediscovered" that are suspected of being space junk left over from human exploration of space, such as spent stages from Saturn V rockets in solar orbit or other spacecraft that are not merely orbiting the Earth. What we will find out by doing a closer examination of these objects will be as interesting as anything else in human history, as at the moment most of this is merely discovering that something is there and not really understanding a whole lot about what it is that is moving around in that orbit. I suspect that the next several decades are going to be involved with cataloging and classifying these asteroids to understand what kind of resources are "out there".
It does appear that the white pixels represent observations of objects for which a solid orbit has not been calculated. The colored pixels appear to be objects for which an orbit is known. You will note that during the last few seconds of the video that the density of "known" objects is high, and that few(er) new objects were being displayed.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Uh... so they see an asteroid, it pops up on the video and then continues in it's observed orbit. How is that observation not a discovery? What's the difference?
Sigs are awesome huh?
Nice, but it's just a shame there isn't a caption or something else to indicate how much time has passed... :)
Do you have any better hostages?
Someone just faked that whole thing taking a fraps video of Osmos.
You have worked on asteriods? Was the commute better than the average commute in china?
View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.
The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green
Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.
As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.
At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.
Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.
Greeh cheese. Remember how the moon is made of it?
Presumably these asteroids were originally a moon which suffered a cataclysmic event in the distant past.
Trolling is a art,
Asteroids.
which is totally what she said
I have worked on asteroids,
Which one was that?
For a potential video game. You pilot a small spaceship, and your job is to shoot asteroids with your laser cannon as they appear. When an asteroid is hit, it breaks into several smaller asteroids. You then have to shoot those asteroids until they break up into asteroids so small that they are no longer a danger. If an asteroid impacts your spaceship, you die.
I think they should call it The Ship that Shoots a Laser Cannon.
Watching that video is incredibly cool and the geek in my is really impressed with it on many levels. I must admit, however, I also find it kinda scary. I guess ignorance is bliss - I know that there are a ton of rocks floating around out there but seeing it graphically presented like that just makes me think it's damn lucky we haven't be pulverized into the stone age...
I'm going to focus, instead, on just how cool it was because, really, it was damn cool.
Better than when I worked on Mars. Then I had to take the subway.
Double-click on the video to reach the YouTube page. To the right of the summary (left of the number of views) is a down-chevron icon. Click on that for the full description.
Or, just copy and paste that description here:
View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green
Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.
As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.
At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.
Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.
Nope, discoveries. They occur at opposition because that's the best time to do deep imagine of a patch of sky, of course.
There's a caption to this on the YouTube page for this video that highlights most of the patterns I noticed myself, including the advent of automated surveys in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Oh, and there is a difference between "smaller jovian moons" (which would all be indistinguishable from Jupiter on this scale) and the Trojan asteroids (which are all more or less at Jupiter's orbital radius, and a good 3-6 AU from Jupiter, not "between Earth and Jupiter." There have been a lot of Trojans found recently.
Right, which is why one would expect that if astronomers were pointing their telescopes at Jupiter in order to find new Jovian moons, they'd be likely to find asteroids between earth and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt, which is what the summary says, and the video seems to bear it out.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's full of rocks!
He didnt really work on asteroids. I think the 'a' in asteroids was a typo on his behalf.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
I'm interested in the dynamic influence of all of the asteroids on spacecraft navigation and the celestial mechanics of the solar system. There are lots of asteroids that influence the orbit of Mars at the meter level, and lesser but still substantial numbers that significantly perturb the Earth and the other planets. Even the large Kuiper belt objects like MakeMake have a significant effect.
You worked on asteroids? Cool. What about other cellestial bodies. Did you ever work on Uranus?
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
The green color for asteroids does NOT indicate that the orbit has been "confirmed." It indicates that the orbit never crosses or approaches the Earth's orbit. And the green color for the planets as well as some of the asteroids hardly causes real confusion in watching, as the planets have their orbits permanently displayed with circles.
I think you need to watch the video again, in 1080p resolution. It DOES show plenty of Jupiter trojans, but they don't stand out as much because not as many of those individual objects have been formally observed and catalogued (a requirement to be displayed in this particular video).
If you were reviewing this for publications, I hope you would read (and understand) the caption provided with it a bit more thoroughly, and watch the highest resolution version, before making your evaluation.
Did you work as a miner? Shuttle pilot? What??
No sig today...
Bruce? Is that you? I thought you died when you stayed behind to set off the nuclear device.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Lookie, you heathen scum! Creationism is vindicated! What's that you see glimmering by the end of the video? It's the eye of God!!! That proves He exists. Y'all scientists done hoist yerselves by your own atheistic little petards, aincha? Gaze into His ocular glory, that greenish, ominous, malevolent, downright wicked...hey wait a second, you're not fooling me, you used summa that false color tricknology to make Him look evil didn't ya?
Next time show us His true colors -- red, white and blue.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Well you see as a marine biologist I thought it would be really ground breaking if I looked for a new species of fish living in the Gobi Desert. After a lifetime of work I'm sorry to say that there just appear to be no fish living in the Gobi Desert. I know I could have taken the easy route and actually tried to study fish in bodies of water, but that would have been so cliche.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Very creepy...
Dewd! Look at all that Arkanor!! - Man the Hulks!!
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I hadn't quite finished this, I wanted to record a voiceover, but a friend submitted it before I was ready.
So essentially the video shows asteroids which are known, so in the early portions around 1980 we have less than 10,000 and by the start of this month we have over half a million. Asteroids are highlighted on discovery and within a second they fade to the colour appropriate to their orbit (Green, Yellow and Red), asteroids are usually observed intensely around discovery and once an orbit is determined observers can go back and follow up to refine the exact elements, I only show the discovery, not follow up measurements. This does mean that a number of the objects that are being plotted have orbits that may be so poorly determined that they are 'lost in space' because they were only observed for a short time and by the time people attempted to follow up they were lost.
At the start of the videos, the 1980's, CCD's weren't used for astronomy, photographic plates were the primary technology for imaging the sky, furthermore, there were no digital systems for identifying asteroids on these plates, so while many asteroids were no doubt imaged they were generally not of interest to the observers who were probably taking nice pictures of nebula or other photogenic phenomena. Many of the discoveries in the 1980's were still made visually by minor planet hunters who knew what they were looking for. One of the earliest 'bursts' in the video is most likely related to observations of Jupiter searching for new moons around the giant planet, they'd look for objects moving on the plates and then make an orbit determination to see if it was a moon, it's waaaaay cooler to find a moon since they're a rarer commodity, but if you merely find an asteroid at least you get a chance to name it.
By the time we get to the mid 1990's we start to see automated sky search programmes like LINEAR, LONEOS, Spacewatch and the Catalina Sky Survey and these are primarily searching for asteroids in opposition since they're closer to Earth and at peak brightness so you can see a discovery cluster radiating out from the Earth.
In the last 8 months you see WISE which is a satellite performing a full sky survey in the Infrared, its scans the sky at 90 degrees to the sun, so its discovery pattern is very distinctive.
Unless they're red
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
mod me funny
There's lots of rocks out there. I wonder how much mass they all add up to. The theory in The Twelfth Planet ( http://www.amazon.com/12th-Planet-Earth-Chronicles-Book/dp/038039362X ), which sounds a bit farfetched since the author states it is gathered from ancient tablets that were dictated to us by aliens, is something like: There was a big planet around where Earth is now. This 12th planet (Moon, Sun + Pluto also being 'planets') with a 3600-year orbit came into our solar system and came really close to it. I think the moon split off from it, then another moon, which shattered to become this asteroid belt, and what was left (with the modified orbit) was Earth. Other pieces that broke off from the planet were flung away and became comets. This is all from memory, so it might not be accurate. Interesting theory, though.
LMAO
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
What keys do I press to select the BFG?
so they see an asteroid, it pops up on the video and then continues in it's observed orbit. How is that observation not a discovery? What's the difference?
A discovery is when it passes from unknown to known. Once you know the asteroid is there, you can't discover it anymore.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
How big are these asteroids? They must be tiny on average otherwise I don't see how we can still be here. We are swimming in the things.
Also why hasn't the asteroid belt become a planet? What prevents the rocks for grouping together?
:T:R:A:N:S:
The major planets are light blue, not green. I certainly don't want you as a reviewer.
Never tell me the odds!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
at least two [...] over the last billion years
So a few asteroid impacts every billion years or so? There are probably many other things that are more dangerous than that.
Natalie Portman, of course.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Remember the 3rd dimension
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
This was answered above by spacemandave:
You'll also notice that during much of the 2000s, there is a gap in discoveries at about the 5 o'clock position. This corresponds to monsoon season in the southwest U.S. (roughly July to mid September). Most of the discovered asteroids in the past decade were made by the Catalina Sky Survey, based just outside of Tucson, AZ, and they generally don't bother observing during monsoon season because of the increase in cloud cover.
What are those rocks made of? And given that their made from some heavy elements, what could either Venus, or Titan offer to lighten objects up?
Towards the end of the video, a lot of the asteroids seem to be detected on discrete shells--around half a doze equally spaced shells through the asteroid belt. Where does that structure come from? I assume it's an artifact of the measuring process.