Three NEAs (near-Earth asteroids) that were hiding from the Sun’s glare have been discovered by astronomers. One of the largest “possibly hazardous” objects seen in the previous three years is one of these asteroids.
Asteroids are hidden in the Sun’s glare
The asteroids were found by using twilight observations taken with the US Department of Energy-built Dark Energy Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. These recently found NEAs are a component of a population of asteroids that resides between Venus’ and Earth’s orbits. Because of the Sun’s glare, it is extremely difficult to make observations in this region between the two planets.
“Only about 25 asteroids with orbits completely within Earth’s orbit have been discovered to date because of the difficulty of observing near the glare of the Sun,” said aid Scott S. Sheppard, lead author of the study published in The Astronomical Journal, in a press statement. Sheppard is an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Science.
The astronomers only got two brief 10-minute windows to observe this
The astronomers overcame this difficulty by making quick observations during favorable twilight circumstances. Only two 10-minute windows were available for the astronomers to perform this. Additionally, because these observations were made relatively close to the horizon, they required looking through a significant amount of Earth’s atmosphere, which can blur and distort the objects.
“So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call planet killers,” added Sheppard, speaking of two of the three discovered asteroids.
Among the three, 2022 AP7, a 1.5-kilometer-wide asteroid, may one day be on a crash track with our planet due to its orbit. The orbits of the other two, LJ4 and 2021 PH27, are safely contained inside the bounds of Earth’s orbit. Interestingly, 2021 PH7 is the asteroid that orbits the Sun the closest. Because of this, lead can melt on its surface.