The Hubble Space telescope has been orbiting Earth and providing insights into our solar system and beyond for more than 30 years. It even caught some things astronomers missed, but now experts in association with machine learning algorithms and citizen scientists have identified more than a thousand new asteroids.
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00:00The Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting Earth and providing insights into our solar
00:08system and beyond for more than 30 years.
00:10It even caught some things astronomers missed, but now experts in association with machine
00:15learning algorithms and citizen scientists have identified more than a thousand new asteroids.
00:20Asteroids are generally leftover material from when our solar system was created.
00:24So far, experts have identified some 1.3 million of them whipping around the sun, and now we've
00:28just added a considerable more.
00:30So how did these go unnoticed for so long?
00:32Well, the researchers say they were captured while observing other distant objects, meaning
00:36the asteroids effectively photobombed Hubble.
00:38And by going back and identifying where the telescope was aimed when the asteroid was
00:41detected has allowed researchers to follow up and confirm its position in space.
00:46This was all done by nearly 11,500 citizen science volunteers looking through an astounding
00:5137,000 images captured by Hubble, with the researchers saying in a recent press release,
00:57quote,
00:57We are getting deeper into seeing the smaller population of main belt asteroids.
01:01We were surprised to see such a large number of candidate objects.
01:04There was some hint that this population existed, but now we are confirming it.