…and to Astrophysical Journal, we can add ApJ Supplement Series. From the October ApJSS (vol.274, issue 2):
Nesvorny, D. Roig, F. Vokrouhlicky, D. et al. Catalog of Proper Orbits for 1.25 Million Main-belt Asteroids and Discovery of 136 New Collisional Families a25 ad675c
Yes, the era of Big Data in astronomy is already here, even before the Vera Rubin Observatory is built and running. The ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility) is running as a testbed for the VRO, and has been since before the pandemic. In Japan, Tomo e-Gozen is now running as a quasi-ZTF. These are in addition to Pan-STARRS – two separate telescopes- with unprecedented breadth and depth. Pan-STARRS is now joined by the ATLAS network ; these are smaller, simpler telescope assemblies, admittedly… which is why they expanded to three of them (and recently, a fourth, new-generation installation). And let’s not forget Gaia. Gaia’s telescope “aperture” (not round, and hard to compare with the others) is ‘only’ ~1 meter. But there are effectively two scopes (a dual-field path), the atmosphere is not a factor, and the platform- in space- is quietly taking data, all day, every day. The downlink bandwidth is not even a real bottleneck; Gaia is at L2, not that far.
So Nesvorny et al. updated Nesvorny et al. 2015 for the new decade. Between 1.25 million asteroids, there are more than coincidences, more than a few. Populations of lesser asteroids will show a dispersal pattern, indicating they’re fragments of some parent body that had suffered a collision. In other words, these sets of asteroids are a “family.” The ‘spray’ pattern indicates additional details; old families have dispersed further, while recent collisions form smaller, denser sprays. Hirayama first noted and claimed publicly the existence of families, in 1918. For one hundred years, we have found over one hundred such families. Now, with the update, Nesvorny et al. are doubling that.
Of course, when Vera Rubin begins its survey, take the above and multiply it several times. VRO is such a jump up, it needs its own, dedicated undersea fiber to get data out of Chile. New algorithms are being written just to sift through the tide of bits. The UK and France will dedicate supercomputing cycles just to render the results. The ‘family reunion’ will be an extended family indeed.