Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2023

22 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 ASTRO PUBLISHING terior to the orbits of Earth and Venus. This is a notoriously challeng- ing region for observations because asteroid hunters have to contend with the glare of the Sun. By taking advantage of the brief yet favorable observing conditions during twilight, however, the as- tronomers found an elusive trio of NEAs. One is a 1.5-kilometer-wide as- teroid called 2022 AP 7 , which has an orbit that may someday place it in Earth’s path. The other asteroids, called 2021 LJ 4 and 2021 PH 27 , have orbits that safely remain completely interior to Earth’s orbit. Also of spe- cial interest to astronomers and astro- physicists, 2021 PH 27 is the closest by NOIRLab − Charles Blue Largest NEA detected in eight years A n international team using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víc- tor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Obser- vatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, has discovered three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) hiding in the inner Solar System, the region in-