The University of Washington and the B612 Foundation have identified 27,500 new high-confidence asteroid discovery candidates by sifting through archives of astronomical data, rather than making fresh observations of the night sky. This weeks-long database search was conducted by the Asteroid Institute, in partnership with UW’s DiRAC Institute and Google Cloud. The program THOR, which stands for “Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery,” was developed to analyze the positions of moving points of light observed in the sky over a period of time and link those points together in ways that are consistent with orbital paths.
The collaboration with Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO allowed for the fine-tuning of algorithms for Google Cloud, resulting in the analysis of 5.4 billion observations drawn from the NOIRLab Source Catalog Data Release 2. Ed Lu, executive director of the Asteroid Institute, highlighted the novelty of using electrons in data centers, in addition to usual photons in telescopes, for making astronomical discoveries. Most of the 27,500 asteroid discovery candidates are located in the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but the candidates also include over 100 apparent near-Earth asteroids.
Confirming the detections of these asteroid discovery candidates can be a laborious task, but the Asteroid Institute is exploring the use of Google’s artificial intelligence tools to streamline the process. The long-term goal of the institute is to create an observational system that can identify potentially threatening near-Earth objects well in advance of their approach to our planet. Once confirmed, the discoveries identified by the Asteroid Institute and Google Cloud would significantly contribute to the minor-planet database. The institute’s results are expected to benefit the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is set to begin science operations in 2025.
The collaboration between the Asteroid Institute, University of Washington, and Google Cloud demonstrates the potential for using archival data and cloud-based platforms to discover new asteroids in the solar system. The development of the THOR program and the use of ADAM show how advanced technology can be leveraged for astronomical discoveries. The identification of asteroid discovery candidates in both the main belt and near-Earth orbit is significant for understanding the distribution of asteroids in our solar system and potential threats to Earth from asteroids.
The increased flow of data expected from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in 2025 will further enhance the ability to detect and track asteroids in the solar system. The collaboration’s results are not only important for asteroid discovery but may also have implications for other astronomical research, such as studying cosmologically important supernovae explosions. By leveraging artificial intelligence tools and cloud-based platforms, astronomers can optimize their observing strategies and gain new insights into the composition and behavior of asteroids and other celestial bodies.
