You know when you're driving east in the morning and the stupid sun is absolutely blinding your eyes and nothing you do can make it stop?
Yeah, astronomers have that problem too:
The asteroids belong to a group found within the orbits of Earth and Venus, but they're incredibly difficult to observe because the brightness of the sun shields them from telescope observations.
To avoid the sun's glare, astronomers leaped at the chance to conduct their observations during the brief window of twilight. An international team spied the space rocks while using the Dark Energy Camera located on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
Astronomers looking for those planet-killers like:
And man, these guys aren't mincing words about how dangerous this thing is:
A near-Earth asteroid measuring 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) or larger "would have a devastating impact on life as we know it," [astronomer Scott Sheppard] said. Dust and pollutants would fill the atmosphere for years, cooling the planet and preventing sunlight from reaching Earth's surface.
"It would be a mass extinction event like hasn't been seen on Earth in millions of years," Sheppard said.
