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Wednesday, June 01, 2022

Tool Helps Spot Killer Asteroids

 Quite interesting,  ultimately this is a big issue, a very big one.   The improvements on detection have been considerable in recent years.  Stopping is a different thing.

Tool Helps Spot Killer Asteroids

The New York Times

Kenneth Chang, May 31, 2022

The nonprofit B612 Foundation and University of Washington researchers discovered 104 previously unknown asteroids by applying cutting-edge computations to 412,000 digital images archived at the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory. The researchers developed the Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery (THOR) algorithm, which can analyze astronomical imagery not only to identify points of light that might be asteroids, but also to determine which points of light in images captured on different nights are the same asteroid. THOR builds a test orbit corresponding to the observed point of light, assumes a specific distance and velocity, then calculates the asteroid's position on subsequent and previous nights. The work adds to planetary defense measures undertaken by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other organizations worldwide. ... ' 

Full Article 

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