I'm John Batchel with Bob Zimmerman.

We're going exploring.

Well, not exactly.

We're going discovering. That's what we're doing.

Bob, what is the Ruben telescope? The Ruben telescope is a ground-based telescope that has just been

finished and got first light in Chile. It's an American telescope. It's designed to scan the sky

quickly and use software to see what it detects.

And one of the things it's going to be looking for, obviously, is changes.

And one of the most important things that will detect, they knew from the start, is new

asteroids.

And so on its first preliminary data release, it's only been operating now for a few months,

it has discovered more than 11,000 new asteroids.

Most are in the main asteroid belt, but a large number in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune.

And in addition, 33 are previously unknown near-earth asteroids, none of which are a

threat to us, but this is just heralding what's going to come, because they're expecting

it to discover as many as 90,000 new near-ear-earth asteroids, many of which will be a risk

to hit the Earth.

So this is a good telescope, John.

It's going to produce magnificent results.

Now, it's not just doing asteroids because it scans the sky, the southern sky repeatedly

and has soft way to detect changes.

It's going to detect supernovas.

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