Researchers at the ϳԹ and partners at Carnegie Mellon University are collaborating on a new project to help scientists use artificial intelligence to better understand the universe.


Researchers at the ϳԹ and partners at Carnegie Mellon University are collaborating on a new project to help scientists use artificial intelligence to better understand the universe.

Using preliminary data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids in our solar system. The findings include hundreds of distant worlds beyond Neptune as well as 33 previously unknown near-Earth objects.

A team led by ϳԹ astronomers has discovered the fastest-ever spinning asteroid with a diameter over half a kilometer.

A new era of astronomy and astrophysics began Monday when the first images captured by the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory were released, demonstrating the extraordinary capabilities of the new telescope and the world’s largest digital camera.

A group of astronomers from across the globe, including a team from the ϳԹ and led by Queen’s University Belfast, have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects will be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later this year.

An asteroid discovery algorithm — designed to uncover near-Earth asteroids for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky — has identified its first “potentially hazardous” asteroid, a term for space rocks in Earth’s vicinity that scientists like to keep an eye on. The roughly 600-foot-long asteroid, designated 2022 SF289, was discovered during a test drive of the algorithm with the ATLAS survey in Hawaii. Finding 2022 SF289, which poses no risk to Earth for the foreseeable future, confirms that the next-generation algorithm, known as HelioLinc3D, can identify near-Earth asteroids with fewer and more dispersed observations than required by today’s methods. That is important because, though scientists know of more than 2,000 near-Earth asteroids, they estimate that another 3,000 await discovery!

A novel algorithm developed by ϳԹ researchers to discover asteroids in the solar system has proved its mettle. The first candidate asteroids identified by the algorithm — known as Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR — have been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, according to a May 31 announcement by the B612 Foundation.

The National Science Foundation awarded the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and nine collaborating organizations, including the ϳԹ, $2.8 million for a two-year “conceptualization phase” of the Scalable Cyberinfrastructure Institute for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.

The first astronomers had a limited toolkit: their eyes. They could only observe those stars, planets and celestial events bright enough to pick up unassisted. But today’s astronomers use increasingly sensitive and sophisticated instruments to view and track a bevy of cosmic wonders, including objects and events that were too dim or distant for their sky-gazing forebears. On Nov. 14, scientists with the California Institute of Technology, the ϳԹ and eight additional partner institutions, announced that the Zwicky…