Vera C. Rubin Observatory has Discovered 11,000 New Asteroids

vibe42•about 3 hours ago

Something related and fun is parsing a simple CSV file of exoplanets.

https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/np...

Download Table -> All Columns, All Rows.

Tried a few new, open, local AI models by giving them the CSV file and asking them to write a simple python script:

1. Parse all rows and build statistical distribution of mass, radius etc.

2. Use those distributions to generate fictional exoplanets.

Playing with this for a space game idea where star systems are populated with fictional exoplanets, but all their params are from the real statistical distributions of all known exoplanets.

A way to get some harder sci-fi using real world data :)

Teever•35 minutes ago

Thank you for the data source. I'll eventually add it to the project that I'm working on

I've got a little orbital dynamics simulator written in C that I've been tinkering with for the past little while. I've got the solar system planets and some asteroids going, I was going to work on moons and artificial satellites / probes next.

My goal was to tinker with simulating a solar system based economy that used Aldrin cyclers for lunar / asteroid mining.

The author of this software posts on HN quite frequently, but I can't remember their username: https://caltech-ipac.github.io/kete/

throw0101a•about 3 hours ago

Any collisions that Earth has to worry about?

(Once heard the observation that the dinosaurs didn't go extinct because of an impact: they went extinct because they didn't have a space program.)

akoumjian•about 2 hours ago

None yet. Any discoveries made with a possible impact risk would end up on the NEO Confirmation Page for follow up. As soon as an observation arc is long enough and gets a provisional designation, impact risks would be calculated and displayed at both NEOCC and JPL Sentry. We also do impact probability calculations and visualizations at Asteroid Institute.

alex1138•about 1 hour ago

I have this mental image of an asteroid scientist sitting in his little research room, being incredibly jaded... "Asteroids are so INTERESTING. Their history, their chemical composition... but no, nobody cares about that, the first question everyone has is 'Will it impact Earth...'"

NooneAtAll3•about 3 hours ago

> The dataset also includes roughly 380 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), two of which have extremely large, elongated orbits (provisionally named 2025 LS2 and 2025 MX348)

Orbit uncertainty 7 and 9, aka almost- and totally-useless

Vera C. Rubin Observatory has Discovered 11,000 New Asteroids

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