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Astronomers have spotted an asteroid in the Sun’s glow that is the largest object discovered in eight years and is “potentially dangerous” to Earth. The study, recently published in The Astronomical Journal, found three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) lurking in the inner Solar System in the region inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. Of those three space rocks, one is a 1.5-kilometer-wide asteroid called 2022 AP7 that has an orbit that could put it in Earth’s path someday, say researchers, including those from the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab of the USA. The other two asteroids, they say, have orbits that stay inside Earth’s orbit and safely away from the planet. “Our twilight survey scans the region within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids,” said lead study author Scott S Sheppard, of the Earth and Planetary Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids around 1 kilometer in diameter, a size we call killer planets,” he said. Astronomers say finding asteroids in the inner Solar System is a daunting challenge because of the Sun’s brightness. To make these observations, they had to take advantage of brief, favorable conditions during twilight—a small 10-minute window each night. In addition to competing with the Sun’s glare, these observations are also close to the horizon, so astronomers must look through a thick layer of Earth’s atmosphere that can cloud and distort what they see. “There are likely only a few NEAs of similar sizes to be found, and these undiscovered large asteroids probably have orbits that keep them inside the orbits of Earth and Venus most of the time,” Dr. Shepard said. “Only about 25 asteroids with orbits completely inside the Earth’s orbit have been discovered to date, due to the difficulty of observing near the Sun’s glow,” he explained. Scientists have yet to reveal more details about Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) 2022 AP7, including further details about its orbital path as well as its composition. But for now, Dr. Sheppard says it will “stay far away from Earth,” according to CNN. The research estimates that the asteroid’s minimum orbital intersection distance (MOID) from Earth was 0.0475 Astronomical Units (au). By comparison, 1 au is roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun. MOID is a measure used to assess potential close approaches and collision risks between astronomical objects and is the distance between the closest points of the orbits of two bodies. “The Earth MOID for 2022 AP7 is only 0.0475 au, making it a PHA and possibly the largest PHA found since 2014 based on absolute magnitude. 2022 AP7 is likely to be in the top 5 percent of the largest known PHAs,” the researchers wrote in the study. The researchers used the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to make these observations. The state-of-the-art camera allowed astronomers to record large areas of the sky with great sensitivity. “DCam can cover large areas of the sky at depths unattainable with smaller telescopes, allowing us to go deeper, cover more sky and probe the inner Solar System in ways that have never been done before,” said Dr Sheppard. . The findings, scientists say, also help reveal the distribution of small bodies in our solar system and shed more light on how asteroids are transported throughout the inner solar system. Scientists say the research also provides more insight into how gravitational interactions and the Sun’s heat contribute to the fragmentation of such space rocks. “Our DECam survey is one of the largest and most sensitive searches ever for objects within Earth orbit and near the orbit of Venus. This is a unique opportunity to understand what kinds of objects are hidden in the inner Solar System,” added Dr. Shepard.
