Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

Video Created by Scott Manley, this is a view of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.
The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

The scale of the video at 1080P resolution is roughly 1million kilometers per pixel, and each second of video corresponds to 60 days.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects, scientific estimates suggest that there are about a billion asteroids larger than 100metres (about the size of a football field) .

Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html

Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifonic/dp/B0013MTJUQ/ - they're awesome guys, give them some love.

Check out todays asteroid map at http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map.html
Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley.

If you are needing a higher quality video or images for a specific purposes - education, news or just eye candy I can supply them on a case by case basis.

Thanks for the Interest!
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Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• astronomy
• asteroids
• minor planets
• solar system
• discovery

[RadioactivFallout]

Almost all are small under 500 meters. If they aren't metallic they will desintegrate in our atmosphere. In fact I have an idea: send spaceships to push them in our atmosphere on Mars, Venus, on moon and Ceres and Vesta to make them bigger.

[szyzyg]

@RadioactivFallout Actually, 100meter and larger objects are almost guaranteed to reach the surface rather than expliding in the atmosphere.

[NocturnaLucid]

Man, they really downplayed the old asteroid belt on every solar system chart I've ever seen.

[szyzyg]

@NocturnaLucid Can you blame them? If they tried to put every known asteroid on a printed chart it'd be out of date before the it finished printing.

[MrFaelon]

@AttilaKattila Yeah true ;p

[AttilaKattila]

@MrFaelon

Well let's hope, whatever happens, that all discoveries and scientific progress will be saved somehow somewhere for something. Would be pretty disappointing to lose everything if somehow the "world" ends.

[getinformedbynature]

Very interesting overview of the asteroid discoveries in the past 30 years.

[GraphicNizor]

I just love the song... who is it?

[skillExtasy]

@Alaska1925 thats what im talkin about everytimes, its an unthinkable mass of resources

[Silichip]

WoW, Staring at the sun "yellow dot" with room light down for about 10 seconds

then pause the video and the asteroids will starts to go the other way round... :)

[jnwpse]

Southpark will soon have an episode called Ass Steroids. And Nicki Minaj will be the subject. And I will have a good laugh. This comment has nothing to do with this video. This I know.

[Alaska1925]

Man, there's so much metal and mineral out there!!! You could do anything with such a quantity of materials!!!

[ddstar]

How do you track an asteroid? Do you number them by what they look like? How do find asteroids behind other asteroids?