Ad Astra Observatory

This is a very cool data visualization of the recent advances in astronomy technology.

Note that the number of discoveries doubles every 2 years between 1997 and 2003; in 6 years, the number goes from 30k to 250k. It had only doubled twice between 1980 and 1997, going form 9k to 30k in that time. It’s doubled once more since 2003! Another 250,000 asteroids were discovered between 2003 and 2009. Wow.

Note that most of the discoveries are made in a line “perpendicular” to Earth’s orbit. You’d expect this; that’s the “night” side of the planet. But in early 2010, some new sky survey started up that is looking at what appear to be “L-points”, because there is a dipole scatter of discoveries “down near the horizon”. Hmm. I wonder what *that* is.

There’s more stuff up there than we thought.