
JWST Has Accidentally Detected a Tiny Asteroid 'Hidden' Between Mars And Jupiter
- 56 secs
- #science
- #ScienceAlert
- Summary
"We – completely unexpectedly – detected a small asteroid in publicly available MIRI calibration observations," says astronomer Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
It wasn't a total bust as far as 10920 was concerned; the images obtained by the JWST allowed the researchers to test some techniques for constraining the size and orbit of asteroids, combined with data from other ground- and space-based telescopes."We estimate," the researchers write in their paper, "that MIRI frames with pointings close to the ecliptic and short integration times of only a few seconds will always include a few asteroids; most of them will be unknown objects." Read More..