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When it comes to searching for asteroids, we have a blind spot. It may seem counterintuitive, but the asteroid’s most important discoveries are now being made at dusk, when astronomers can see up close to the horizon – and close to the sun – for what little is known. asteroids orbiting within the orbits of Earth, Venus and even Mercury. In perspective published in Science today, asteroid hunter Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Science highlights the new “twilight telescope” surveys and the riches they are beginning to discover. It includes the first asteroid with an interior orbit to Venus and the one with the shortest known orbital period around the sun, both of which have been unearthed in the past two years. It also includes “city killers”, asteroids large enough that if they hit Earth the damage will be severe. “We’re doing a full survey looking for anything moving around the orbit of Venus, which is somewhere we haven’t surveyed very deeply in the past with anyth

While climate change is taking effect everywhere on Earth, the Arctic Circle is feeling its effects primarily, in the form of melting glaciers, melting ice sheets, and decreasing sea ice. Key players in climate change include clouds covering the Earth’s surface and microscopic aerosols in the air called ice core particles that seed the formation of ice in these clouds. This dance of ice cores, cloud cover and heat all play a major role in climate. But the all-important ice-forming aerosols, which can be mineral dust, microbes, or ocean spray, are rarely studied in the Arctic – where they need to be studied most – because little is known about their effects there, and not many scientists venture further north. . However, Colorado State University scientists did. In 2019, an intrepid team including atmospheric research scientist Jessie Creamean boarded a ship, sailed north, collected thousands of samples of air, seawater, sea ice, snow, and meltwater, and brought home the physical evi