More Challenges in Detecting Dangerous Hidden Asteroids

 Been long watching some of the 'Planetary Defense' work being done by NASA, most recently the DART flight and impact.  Its been discovered that there are some asteroids hidden behind the glare of our sun.    Can we effectively change asteroid orbits effectively?   The challenge continues

‘Planet killer’ asteroids nearly a mile long detected after being hidden by the sun's brightness

Scott Gleeson, Jordan Mendoza, USA TODAY

Astronomers have detected three asteroids in close proximity to Earth, two of which pose a potential threat as "planet killers" because of their larger and hazardous size, but don't worry, says a NASA expert, they aren't expected to hurt us. 

According to findings published in the peer-reviewed Astronomical Journal on Monday, the three asteroids – which belong to a group found within the orbits of Earth and Venus – were previously undetectable via telescope due to the glare and brightness of the sun.

However, an international space team of astronomers waited until twilight at an observatory in Chile to examine the asteroids using a dark energy camera from a Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, according to the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab.

The biggest asteroid is the most hazardous object to prompt a significant risk to Earth in the last eight years, researchers say. One of the asteroids, named 2022 AP7, is a little less than one mile wide but has an orbit that could reach Earth's path in the distant future. A timetable is uncertain, though, according to findings in the journal. 

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The other two asteroids, 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, pose less of a risk to colliding with Earth, researchers say.

An artist illustration captures an asteroid orbiting closer to the sun than Earth's orbit.

"Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids,” lead study author Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth & Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call planet killers."  ... '