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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.
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
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"...
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.
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.
Actually, you can't see that on the 4:3 cropped version linked into Slashdot, but if you go to the actual YouTube video you can see the counters for the current year and the currently discovered number of asteroids.
which is totally what she said
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.
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
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.
One Sun to rule them all, One Sun to find them,
One Sun to bring them all and with its gravity bind them
In the Solar System where the asteroids fly.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Ehm, you mean:
One Oracle to rule them all, One Oracle to find them,
One Oracle to bring them all and with its gravity bind them
In the Oracular System where the asteroids fly.
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.
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
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.
The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
mod me funny
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!
The major planets are light blue, not green. I certainly don't want you as a reviewer.