Madrid. An alert system operated by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) can now scan the entire sky every 24 hours for objects on a collision course with Earth.
Atlas (Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System), funded by NASA, has expanded its reach to the southern hemisphere, as it has two telescopes in that region in addition to the two existing in the northern hemisphere, in Haleakala and Maunaloa, Hawaii . Construction is now complete and operations are underway. Additional artifacts are in South Africa and Chile.
“An asteroid that could hit Earth can come at any time from any direction, so Atlas now reaches the entire sky, all the time,” John Tonry, IfA professor and principal investigator for the alert system, said in a statement. .
The new telescopes are located at the Sutherland Observing Station in South Africa and the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. These locations were selected not only for their access to the southern part of the sky, but also for their time difference with Hawaii: they can observe at night when it is daytime in this archipelago.
The Atlas system is capable of monitoring the entire dark sky every 24 hours. The modestly sized telescopes can image a patch of sky 100 times larger than the full Moon in a single exposure.
It can provide a day’s warning for an asteroid 20 meters in diameter, capable of destroying a city. Since the largest ones can be detected further away, the system can provide up to three weeks’ warning in the event of one such 100-meter body, which could cause major regional devastation; it could produce 10 times the destruction of the recent Hunga Tonga volcano eruption if it hit Earth.
UH developed the first two Atlas telescopes in Hawaii with a 2013 grant from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, now part of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The two facilities, at Haleakala and Maunaloa, became fully operational in 2017.
After several years of successful operation in Hawaii, IfA proposed additional funding from NASA to build two more telescopes and install them in the southern hemisphere. He sought partners to host these telescopes and selected the South African Astronomical Observatory and a multi-institutional collaboration in Chile. The presence of Atlas increases the already substantial astronomical capacity in both countries.
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