According to the article, Three Near-Earth Asteroids Were Hiding in the Sun’s Glare, written by Will Sullivan for the Smithsonian, astronomers have discovered three near-Earth asteroids that had been “hiding” unseen in the sun’s glare. In fact, the sun’s glare makes hard to spot any possible asteroids and astronomers that hope to find these objects must look near the horizon, where the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere distorts the view. To complicates matter, astronomers only have two a brief window of time of ten-minute to explore the inner solar system for these objects each night.
The biggest of the three asteroids, named 2022 AP7, is nearly one mile wide—large enough to be called a “planet-killer.” And according to NOIRLab, the operator of the telescope that spotted the asteroids, 2022 AP7 has an orbit that might one day cross paths with Earth’s. Scientists say 2022 AP7 will stay away from Earth, for now. But the asteroid might not be harmless forever. “Way down the line, in the next few thousand years, it could turn into a problem for our descendants.” In that case, it would be a mass extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years.
