Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On February 7, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope spotted a new asteroid about the size of Italy's Rome Colosseum and one of the smallest asteroids ever found in the main asteroid belt.

The asteroid discovered by European astronomers using the Weber telescope is 328 to 656 feet (100 to 200 meters) long and lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It would be difficult to find dark objects of this size in the main asteroid belt, but in the future astronomers can use the Weber Telescope to find more asteroids of this size.

Future observations will help astronomers learn more about the asteroid and confirm that it is indeed a newly discovered object.

In 1998, astronomers first discovered the asteroid (10920) 1998 BC1 in the main asteroid belt. When the Weber Space Telescope research team pointed the telescope's mid-infrared instrument MIRI at the main belt asteroid to take calibration images, they inadvertently discovered a new asteroid.

"the asteroid we found in the public MIRI calibration observations was completely unexpected," astronomer Thomas M ü ller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany said in a statement. "these observations are the first MIRI instrument calibration for the ecliptic plane, and our work shows that the telescope's MIRI instruments will detect many new objects."

The artist's illustration depicts an irregularly shaped gray asteroid, similar to the new celestial asteroid discovered by the Weber Telescope, a remnant of the formation of the solar system. So far, astronomers have located more than 1.1 million asteroids.

Many asteroids are still unknown to humans. The latest findings from the Weber Telescope suggest that powerful infrared telescopes may discover more small rocky objects that have not been detected before.

The calibration image taken by the Weber Telescope team when they tried to observe the asteroid (10920) 1998 BC1 did not live up to expectations and was considered a technical failure by the researchers because the asteroid (10920) 1998 BC1 captured by the telescope looked too bright.

Fortunately, astronomers can still use these data to test a new technique for determining the orbit and size of asteroids by combining these observations with data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission and ground-based telescopes.

While analyzing the data, the researchers stumbled upon a new asteroid.

"our findings suggest that even 'failed' observations have value in scientific research if you have the right mindset and a little bit of luck," Muller said. "our observations are in the main asteroid belt, but the incredible sensitivity of the Weber Telescope allows us to find this object about 100 meters long at a distance of more than 100 million kilometers."

"this is a great result that highlights the ability of mid-infrared detectors to detect previously undetectable asteroids in the main zone," Bryan Holler, a Weber Telescope technology support scientist at the Institute of Space Telescope Science in Baltimore, said in a statement. "We are repeating these observations and looking forward to the emergence of new asteroids in these images."

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