{"id":14306,"date":"2013-02-21T13:55:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T23:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=14306"},"modified":"2020-12-04T14:56:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-05T00:56:11","slug":"uh-astronomers-developing-system-to-identify-dangerous-asteroids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2013\/02\/21\/uh-astronomers-developing-system-to-identify-dangerous-asteroids\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> astronomers developing system to identify dangerous asteroids"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> minute<\/span><\/span>
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ATLAS project head John Tonry with a conceptual drawing for an ATLAS telescope. (Images courtesy of the Institute for Astronomy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the aid of a $5 million grant from NASA<\/abbr>, a University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Mānoa<\/a> team of astronomers is developing ATLAS<\/abbr> (Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System) to identify dangerous asteroids before their final plunge to Earth.<\/p>\n

The Institute for Astronomy’s<\/a> team is on track to build and operate an asteroid detection system that will patrol the visible sky twice a night looking for faint objects moving through space. Astronomers expect the system to be fully operational by the end of 2015.<\/p>\n

The team predicts the system will offer a one-week warning for a 50-yard diameter asteroid or “city killer” and three weeks for a 150 yard-diameter “county killer.”<\/p>\n

“That’s enough time to evacuate the area of people, take measures to protect buildings and other infrastructure, and be alert to a tsunami danger generated by ocean impacts,” said UH<\/abbr> Mānoa astronomer and ATLAS<\/abbr> project head John Tonry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

ATLAS<\/abbr> will complement the Institute for Astronomy’s Pan-STARRS project, a system that searches for large “killer asteroids” years, decades and even centuries before impact with Earth. Whereas Pan-STARRS takes a month to complete one sweep of the sky in a deep but narrow survey, ATLAS<\/abbr> will search the sky in a closer and wider path to help identify the smaller asteroids that hit Earth much more frequently.<\/p>\n

As well as searching for asteroids, ATLAS<\/abbr> will also look for dwarf planets, supernova explosions and flashes of light that occur when a star is gobbled up by a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy.<\/p>\n

Read the UH<\/abbr> Mānoa Institute for Astronomy news release<\/a> for more about the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A $5-million grant from NASA aids in the development of the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System, which will identify dangerous asteroids before their final plunge to Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,9],"class_list":["post-14306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14306"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131873,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14306\/revisions\/131873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}