A Swarm of New Asteroids

Watch as NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory brings the night sky to life! This video showcases Rubin Observatory's ability to detect small objects orbiting the Sun on a scale we've only imagined until now. These are the first frames (1,185 frames to be exact) in the greatest cosmic movie ever made, showing asteroids in motion against the static background of stars and galaxies. The area highlighted in this video is the same region of the sky featured in Rubin’s First Look wide-field image — the Virgo Cluster — and it’s chock-full of asteroids we’re seeing for the very first time with Rubin! First we see a few individual asteroids in detail, then a few more, and then the full scale of Rubin's capacity to detect thousands of brand new traveling space rocks in just one night is revealed. The video ends by showing the relatively narrow slice of space where all of these objects were detected — highlighting that this brief clip is only the beginning of something much bigger. Soon Rubin will begin generating 10 years of time-lapse footage of the entire southern night sky, the only observatory ever to do this. 

This first set of Solar System discoveries released by Rubin Observatory includes 2104 new asteroids in the Solar System, including 7 near-Earth objects, 11 Jupiter Trojans, and 9 trans-Neptunian objects (these object classes are described in more detail below). Within this field, Rubin also detected approximately 1,800 additional previously-known objects (not included in this video) for a total of just under 4000 detections. In other words, a majority of this set of detections were new discoveries! 

Rubin’s unique capacity to monitor the changing sky will help us keep tabs on objects on the move in our Solar System, like the asteroids featured here. Currently about 20,000 asteroids are discovered annually by all of the world’s observatories on the ground and in space. But as we see in this video, Rubin detected over 2,100 never-before-seen asteroids in just 7 nights of observations, focused on a comparatively tiny fraction of the visible sky. 

Once it’s fully operational, Rubin will discover millions of new asteroids in the first 1-2 years of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, compared to the 1.45 million we know of today. With Rubin we'll learn more about how our Solar System formed, and we'll know sooner than ever before if an asteroid poses a threat to Earth. Rubin will also be our best tool for spotting interstellar visitors, objects from outside our Solar System making brief, rare appearances in our cosmic neighborhood (only two have been discovered to date:  1I/ʻOumuamua and comet 2I/Borisov). The observations highlighted in this video showcase Rubin’s remarkable versatility and promise an entirely new view of the dynamic sky.

Rubin Observatory is uniquely equipped to take the fullest census of the solar system yet because of its huge camera and quick coverage of the sky, and because it gives us the opportunity to employ the next generation of asteroid discovery algorithms on a scale that wasn’t possible before now. Every night, Rubin's software sifts through billions of potential detections — both distant and slow-moving, and nearby and fast-moving — to identify thousands of previously unknown moving objects. Over the next decade, those nightly discoveries will accumulate to nearly quadruple the number of small bodies we know in the Solar System today.

This video features data collected by Rubin Observatory using the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera — the largest digital camera in the world. 

We invite you to further explore the moving objects in our Solar System using Rubin’s OrbitViewer app. 

Main Belt Asteroids

This first set of discoveries released by Rubin includes 2015 asteroids, shown in teal and generally moving in the same direction as they orbit the Sun. Rubin Observatory is poised to detect a few million more asteroids than we know today. Asteroids are the leftover building blocks from the birth of our Solar System — pieces of rock and metal that never quite came together to form a planet. Most asteroids are found in a wide zone between Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. There are millions of asteroids in this belt, ranging from small rocks to massive objects hundreds of kilometers across. Asteroids don't emit their own light — instead they reflect light emitted by the Sun. This makes them relatively faint and hard to see, even for many telescopes. But not Rubin Observatory, which will detect more asteroids in its first year of operations than all previous telescopes combined. 

Near-Earth Objects

This video features 7 never-before-seen near-Earth objects (NEOs), shown in yellow-orange and moving very quickly across the frame. Rubin Observatory will uncover many NEOs, most of them asteroids and some comets — and a few could potentially be on a collision course with Earth. Scientists have already identified most NEOs larger than one kilometer across. However, they’ve found just over 40% of the NEOs larger than 140 meters, which are still large enough to cause significant damage.

With its powerful light-gathering ability and its capacity to scan the entire visible sky every few nights, Rubin Observatory will uncover a few million previously unseen asteroids, including about 100,000 NEOs that have yet to be detected. By dramatically increasing discovery rates, Rubin will give scientists the earliest possible warning of any potential impact threats.

Jupiter Trojans

Jupiter Trojans are asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. They gather around two stable regions called Lagrange points, one that leads Jupiter and one that trails behind. These spots are gravitationally balanced, so the asteroids stay in place relative to Jupiter. Now, in just a few nights, Rubin has contributed 11 new additions to Jupiter’s known Trojan population. 

Trans-Neptunian Objects

Nine newly-discovered trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are represented in this video, shown in purple. Their motion appears slower than the other objects because they are much farther away from Earth. TNOs are icy objects in the outer Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune — some of the most distant Solar System objects we know. They are leftovers from planet formation, largely unchanged since the Solar System's earliest times. TNOs are small, dim, and far away so we need extremely powerful telescopes like Rubin to see them. 

Rubin will be a game-changer for inventorying the outer Solar System, discovering tens of thousands of new TNOs, and maybe even revealing larger objects like an undiscovered planet beyond Neptune — if one exists.