Asteroid treasure in the Hubble archive

Cosmic movement profile: In this Hubble observation taken on 5 December 2005 the Main Belt asteroid 2001 SE101 passes in front of the Crab Nebula. NASA/ESA HST, Image processing: Melina Thévenot Cosmic movement profile: In this Hubble observation taken on 5 December 2005 the Main Belt asteroid 2001 SE101 passes in front of the Crab Nebula. NASA/ESA HST, Image processing: Melina Thévenot - The data of the space telescope contain the traces of many unknown celestial bodies With a sophisticated combination of human and artificial intelligence, astronomers uncovered 1701 new asteroid trails in archival data of the Hubble Space Telescope spanning the past 20 years. While about one third could be identified and attributed to known objects, more than 1000 trails probably correspond to previously unknown asteroids. These unidentified asteroids are faint and likely smaller than asteroids detected in ground-based surveys. They could give the astronomers valuable clues about conditions in the early solar system, when the planets were formed. In June 2019, on International Asteroid Day, an international group of astronomers launched the Hubble Asteroid Hunter , a citizen science project on the Zooniverse platform.