Gaia Has Observed Over 150K Asteroids In Our Solar System

ESA's Gaia mission has determined he orbits of 154,741 asteroids in our solar system.  Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:03 As well as stars, galaxies and quasars,

00:18 Gaia also observes objects in our solar system,

00:21 measuring their positions and brightnesses at different times.

00:26 By far the largest group of solar system objects in Gaia's data release 3

00:32 are 154,741 asteroids, for which Gaia has determined the orbits.

00:39 Depending on their orbits, one can distinguish different groups of asteroids.

00:44 Most of the asteroids are in the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

00:50 Over a period of about 10,000 years, Jupiter's powerful gravity

00:56 can perturb an asteroid's path so strongly that some of them become Mars

01:00 crossers. Do you notice another group that is

01:03 around the distance of Jupiter? They are the so-called Trojans. They are

01:08 collected in two clusters, preceding and following the giant planet,

01:12 but never getting close to it. If we move beyond the orbit of Neptune,

01:17 we find trans-Neptunian objects. Gaia observed the brightest 24 members

01:22 of this population.

01:25 Let's now focus again on the internal regions of the solar system.

01:37 Back in the inner solar system, we find objects that come close to the Earth

01:42 and sometimes cross its orbit. They were brought to the inner solar system

01:46 from the main belt, due to gravitational perturbations by Jupiter and other

01:50 planets. Due to close encounters with the

01:53 terrestrial planets, the orbits of near-Earth asteroids reach

01:56 large inclinations with respect to the Earth's orbit,

01:59 and can also come very close to the Sun, where they experience strong heating.

02:04 None of the known near-Earth objects is a danger to Earth

02:08 in the coming decades, but it is very important

02:11 to determine their orbits precisely. We now move close to the Earth

02:16 and observe this group of 446 near-Earth asteroids.

02:23 Finally, we move into the main belt and see many of the 153,220 asteroids

02:31 passing by.

02:33 [Music]