Elizabeth Howell reports that it is a big sky out there. How are we going to locate asteroids, especially those that might be threatening Earth? While there are many dedicated asteroid searches out there - such as LINEAR, NEOWISE, Pan-STARRS, NEAT, Spacewatch Project, Catalina Sky Survey and more - there are three main limitations to looking for asteroids. The first is time, which is limited on telescopes that are popular. The second is resolution. Asteroids are small and they are hard to see. And finally, trying to predict the path of the asteroid. Most near-Earth asteroids originate in the main belt of asteroids that is between Mars and Jupiter. Relative to the background stars, this means these little objects are moving fast.
In a paper published on Arxiv and accepted in the Astrophysical Journal, three astronomers describe a technique where they take a bunch of short exposures of the sky. Then they digitally shift their locations in such a way that the images are combined, making the stars streaks and the asteroids a single point. http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.01599v1 They claim this could find asteroids that are 10 times fainter than those found in conventional sources.
Original URL: http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/new-asteroid-hunting-technique-could-zero-in-on-more-threats-150820.htm
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