James Webb accidentally spotted a tiny asteroid, making it the smallest object that the space telescope has discovered yet.
James Webb has spotted an asteroid the size of the Roman Colosseum. Astronomers say that the 300 – 650 foot asteroid is part of our solar system’s main belt, and that it was originally spotted between Mars and Jupiter. It’s likely the smallest item that Webb has detected to date.
“We — completely unexpectedly — detected a small asteroid in publicly available MIRI calibration observations,” Thomas Müller, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany,Instead, the observations were meant to create calibration images of the main belt asteroid 1998 BC1, originally discovered in 1998. However, while collecting data for the calibration images, James Webb detected the smaller asteroid instead.
If confirmed, the new asteroid’s detection could help astronomers shed new light on humanity’s understanding of the formation and evolution of the solar system. And, it could also prove Webb’s efficiency at detecting smaller objects like this asteroid, too. That could prove helpful in future observations.
Astronomers will look at additional position-relative data to help determine whether or not the James Webb space telescope has, in fact, detected a new asteroid, or if the data is actually something else.
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