For decades, the standard way to search for asteroids in our Solar System has been to scan the night sky for fast-moving specks of light \u2014 but a new method of hunting for these space rocks at twilight is also proving fruitful. It\u2019s much harder to pull off, but by scanning parts of the sky at dusk, astronomers have been able to find key asteroids they wouldn\u2019t have seen otherwise.<\/p>\n

The two largest asteroid finders at the moment are the Pan-STARRS observatory out of Hawaii and the Catalina Sky Survey, which operates multiple telescopes out of Arizona. For the last decade, these two programs have been the premier hunters of near-Earth asteroids. But they primarily search the sky at night, looking away from the Sun. That limits the parts of the sky they can observe to the area right around Earth and the outer Solar System. <\/p>\n

Recently, asteroid hunters have been turning their telescopes toward<\/em> the Sun just after it sets or just before it rises. The sky is hazy at that time but still bright enough to add difficulty to the search. But by braving twilight, asteroid hunters have been able to find plenty of asteroids that cross Earth\u2019s orbit and some circulating in the Solar System\u2019s interior. By observing at twilight, scientists working with the Blanco four-meter telescope in Chile have found the first known asteroid that orbits closer to the Sun than Venus and the largest potentially hazardous asteroid to Earth that\u2019s been found in the last several years. (Don\u2019t worry, it won\u2019t be crossing paths with the planet.)<\/p>\n