Hubble Telescope Discovers More Than 1,000 New Asteroids

The Hubble Space Telescope is not only the most famous astronomical instrument when it comes to imaging distant galaxies, but it has also been a great help to scientists in studying objects right in our solar system. Recently, an international team of astronomers found a way to use Hubble data to detect previously unknown asteroids, most of which are located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists have discovered a total of 1,031 new asteroids - an astonishing number in just one study. Many of these asteroids are extremely small and difficult to detect. Hundreds of them are less than a kilometer in diameter. To identify them, the team looked at a total of 37,000 Hubble images taken over a period of 19 years, identifying clear traces of asteroids passing by the telescope's camera.

To process such a large amount of data, professional astronomers enlisted the help of a community of amateur researchers to help sift through the Hubble image archives, looking for signs of asteroids. This is part of a project called the Hubble Asteroid Hunter. In addition to human labor, the team also used machine learning to pick out signs of a “photobombing” asteroid in Hubble images by leaving a trail in the image as the asteroid passed by. This allowed them to find a surprising number of objects, a finding that is crucial to providing insight into the evolutionary models of our solar system.

“ The location of asteroids changes over time and therefore you cannot find them just by entering the coordinates, because at different times they may not be there, ” said Dr. Bruno Merín, co-author of the study. “ Scrutinizing all the images of asteroids requires a huge amount of time. So we came up with the idea of ​​collaborating with more than 10,000 scientific volunteers to study the huge Hubble archive .”

By looking at the white streaks left behind in the images, some of which were exposed multiple times, astronomers can calculate the orbits of asteroids and their distances. Then, by comparing the brightness of each object to its distance, they can work out its size.