Kilcullen Diary: A Christmas Carol: 3

DID YOU KNOW?

NASA funds an asteroid impact early warning system developed by the University of Hawaii, named ATLAS for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System. Four telescopes, two in Hawaii and one each in Chile and South Africa, automatically scan the whole sky several times every night looking for moving objects. The system has so far discovered 1,087 near-Earth asteroids, 101 potentially dangerous ones, and 94 comets. Once of these last, 2023 A3 discovered last year, will become bright enough in the next two weeks to be seen with the naked eye.