Dark and dangerous asteroids spotted lurking unseen near Earth’s
orbitMarch 6th, 2010 - 2:56 pm ICT by ANI London, March 6 (ANI):
Reports indicate that an infrared space telescope has spotted
several very dark asteroids that have been lurking unseen near
Earth’s orbit. Called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer
(WISE), the new NASA telescope launched on 14 December on a
mission to map the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. It began
its survey in mid-January. In its first six weeks of
observations, it has discovered 16 previously unknown asteroids
with orbits close to Earth’s. Of these, 55 per cent reflect less
than one-tenth of the sunlight that falls on them, which makes
them difficult to spot with visible-light telescopes. One of
these objects is as dark as fresh asphalt, reflecting less than
5 per cent of the light it receives. Many of these dark
asteroids have orbits that are steeply tilted relative to the
plane in which all the planets and most asteroids orbit. This
means telescopes surveying for as