Planetary defense efforts are looking for asteroids that might cause regional destruction in the future.
An artist’s impression of an asteroid lurking inside the orbits of Earth and Venus.that had been hiding in the glare of the Sun — and one of them is a giant. At nearly a mile across, it is big enough to cause planet-wide destruction if it hit the Earth, though it won’t come anywhere close enough to be a threat for a hundred years or so.
These smaller asteroids are also harder to observe because they’re fainter. They typically orbit the Sun every three to five years, so most of the time, they are too far away to be visible, and we only get occasional opportunities to view them. “It’s like when you go out at night and there’s no Moon,” Sheppard says. You can see many more stars when there’s no Moon because when the Moon is out, its glow obscures the fainter stars. Something similar happens when trying to spot faint asteroids in the glare of the Sun, which is why these big asteroids have remained hidden until now.
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