<\/p>\nCaltech, Space Telescope Science Institute<\/p>\n
<\/span>\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Icy objects could offer clues to solar system beginnings<\/h2>\n
A crop of newly spotted Neptune Trojans were masked by the Milky Way, too. These asteroids gather in the same orbit as Neptune, but offset from the planet at 60 degrees. Astronomers think they were some of the original building blocks of the solar system and contain an ancient record of planetary formation and evolution.<\/p>\n
Other planets have Trojans, too. Jupiter has thousands. Astronomers think Neptune has many more, but so far they have seen only 30 in the cluster of space objects that orbit ahead of Neptune, and just two in the cluster behind it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would expect these [groups of Trojans] to be symmetric in numbers, so you have to get more than two,\u201d planetary scientist Meg Schwamb said in a news conference at the meeting on October 28.<\/p>\n
The trailing cloud happened to have been moving in front of the Milky Way from the perspective of Earth for the last 15 years. Spotting individual Trojans against that crowded background was \u201clike finding a needle in a sequined dress,\u201d said Schwamb, of Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Schwamb and colleagues examined Vera Rubin data taken from the commissioning phase \u2014\u00a0the period when engineers were testing the telescope. In this early data haul, the team found two more trailing Trojans, plus one candidate. They seem to be similar in composition to the leading ones, which matches theories of how the solar system formed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just kind of got lucky,\u201d Schwamb said. \u201cThese objects photobombed the commissioning survey.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really the appetizer for what Rubin Observatory is going to do in its mission for the next ten years,\u201d she added. \u201cThere\u2019s hundreds more of these objects likely to be found.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the excitement about these discoveries is dampened by fears of losing observations to bright satellites crisscrossing the telescope\u2019s field of view, says astronomer Sam Lawler of the University of Regina in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to put in the constant downer of how the increasing numbers of satellites will make these discoveries harder,\u201d Lawler says. \u201cThere are one hundred new satellites launching every week, and they keep getting bigger and brighter. These discoveries will be hindered by that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even with the satellites, Lawler anticipates many more cool discoveries from Rubin.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust finding a dwarf planet so quickly, maybe we\u2019ll find something even bigger,\u201d she says. \u201cThere could be something the size of Mars out there. And then we\u2019d have the whole planet debate all over again. It would be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The outer solar system is yielding its secrets to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Less than five months into the observatory\u2019s decade-long survey of the sky, a potential new dwarf planet has already popped up in its data, astronomers reported this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society\u2019s Division of Planetary Sciences in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}