It's just a cozy little neighborhood

Here's a shot of a sunspot up close and personal.

Back in 1980 astronomers knew of about 9000 asteroids, those large rocky bodies that are mostly between Mars and Jupiter. About then astronomers also realized that asteroids could do some nasty damage to the earth, so started seriously looking for them. In the 1990s the efforts became automated and also vastly improved this year. The current count of asteroids is over a half-million. And the discovery rate isn't slowing.

Here's a cool video someone made of all that data. The image shows the orbits of Mercury through Jupiter plus all the known asteroids from 1980 to today. When an asteroid is found it momentarily flashes white, then changes to red if it crosses earth orbit, yellow if it comes close to earth's orbit, otherwise it is green. By the end there is a huge amount of green and a scary amount of red. The information by the author is worth reading.