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As a consequence of the large (and growing) number of near-Earth objects discovered, some of them are lost before their orbit can be firmly established to ensure long-term recovery. A fraction of these present non-negligible chances of impact with the Earth. We present a method of targeted observations that allowed us to eliminate that risk by obtaining deep images of the area where the object would be, should it be on a collision orbit. 2006 QV89 was one of these objects, with a chance of impact with the Earth on 2019 September 9. Its position uncertainty (of the order of 1 degree) and faintness (below V$sim$24) made it a difficult candidate for a traditional direct recovery. However, the position of the virtual impactors could be determined with excellent accuracy. In July 2019, the virtual impactors of 2006 QV89 were particularly well placed, with a very small uncertainty region, and an expected magnitude of V$<$26. The area was imaged using ESOs Very Large Telescope, in the context of the ESA/ESO collaboration on Near-Earth Objects, resulting in very constraining a non-detection. This resulted in the elimination of the virtual impactor, even without effectively recovering 2006 QV89, indicating that it did not represent a threat. This method of deep non-detection of virtual impactors demonstrated a large potential to eliminate the threat of other-wise difficult to recover near-Earth objects
The formation of Uranus regular moons has been suggested to be linked to the origin of its enormous spin axial tilt (~98o). A giant impact between proto-Uranus and a 2-3 M_Earth impactor could lead to a large tilt and to the formation of a debris dis
A profound shift in the study of cosmology came with the discovery of thousands of exoplanets and the possibility of the existence of billions of them in our Galaxy. The biggest goal in these searches is whether there are other life-harbouring planet
Further advances in exoplanet detection and characterisation require sampling a diverse population of extrasolar planets. One technique to detect these distant worlds is through the direct detection of their thermal emission. The so-called direct ima
We present high-precision linear polarization observations of four bright hot Jupiter systems ($tau$ Boo, HD 179949, HD 189733 and 51 Peg) and use the data to search for polarized reflected light from the planets. The data for 51 Peg are consistent w
Deep learning techniques have been well explored in the transiting exoplanet field, however previous work mainly focuses on classification and inspection. In this work, we develop a novel detection algorithm based on a well-proven object detection fr