Stellar Sleuths: Citizen Scientists and AI Uncover Hidden Asteroids With Hubble

Deep-Sky Exposure Yields Telltale Evidence for Asteroid Moving Across the Celestial Background
Over 4 billion years ago, the eight major planets around our Sun formed by sweeping up debris from a vast disk of dust and gas surrounding the Sun. This is common to the planet birthing process, and the Hubble Space Telescope was the first to optically see similar disks surrounding newborn stars, providing a peek into the solar system’s formative years. Now, 4 billon years later, the planet construction yard is still cluttered with leftover debris.

Most of this ancient space rubble, called asteroids, can be found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter within the main asteroid belt. The census of the asteroid population is ongoing. Hubble’s unique capabilities allow it to be used as an “asteroid hunter” for this task. Asteroids appear as curved trails in Hubble images. The trails are due to parallax because Hubble is not stationary, but orbiting Earth. This gives the illusion that the faint asteroids are swimming along curved trajectories.