Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Vera Rubin

Rock hunters have been scouting various dots in old photographs to ascertain where they are and where they're headed. They got quite the haul: 27,500 of the things.

Only a hundred of these are Earth-crossing. Most seem to be Jove-trojans out in SJL4 and '5; or just asteroid-belt floaters. Maybe "Lucy" can look at some of the new small trojans on its flies-by.

More exciting to me are the new KBOs. As their orbits get finetuned, that's more of the extreme-inclination or chaotic iceballs Brown and Batygin (and Nesvorný) can use for pinning down Planet Nine. The planned Vera Rubin Observatory should cover most of that part of the sky; finding at least smaller and dimmer KBOs and maybe even this elusive planet itself.

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