37,000 images taken over 19 years by the Hubble Space Telescope were analyzed. What did they reveal? The thousand uncatalogued asteroids.
Cataloging asteroids in space is complicated due to their size. They do not stop to be photographed as they orbit the Sun. Approximately 400 of these uncatalogued asteroids are smaller than 1 kilometer.
Volunteers from around the world contributed to the identification of these asteroids. Professional scientists combined the volunteers’ efforts with a machine learning algorithm to identify the asteroids. It represents a new approach to finding asteroids in astronomical archives spanning decades. The researchers say this in a NASA statement.
Asteroid belt
«We are deepening the observation of the smallest population of asteroids in the main belt. “We were surprised to see such a large number of objects.” This was said by lead author Pablo García Martín from the Autonomous University of Madrid.
The large random sample offers new insights into the formation and evolution of the asteroid belt. Finding many small asteroids favors the idea that they are fragments of larger asteroids that have collided and broken up. It’s like shattered pottery. It is a grinding process that lasts billions of years.
The trapped asteroids are mostly found in the main belt. It is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its brightness is measured by Hubble’s sensitive cameras. And comparing its brightness with its distance allows us to estimate the size.
«The positions of asteroids change over time. It is not possible to find them simply by entering coordinates. At different times they may not be there,” Martín said. «As astronomers we do not have time to look at all the images of asteroids. “So we came up with the idea of collaborating with more than 10,000 citizen science volunteers.”
Artificial intelligence
A total of 11,482 citizen science volunteers provided nearly 2 million IDs. They received training for an automated algorithm to identify asteroids based on artificial intelligence. This pioneering approach can be effectively applied to other data sets. The thousand uncatalogued asteroids were found with this method.
Next, the project will explore streaks of previously unknown asteroids. They hope to characterize their orbits and study their properties, such as rotation periods. Most of these asteroid streaks were captured by Hubble many years ago. It is not possible to follow them now to determine their orbits. The findings are published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
