A&A 642, A35 (2020) Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038666 & c ESO 2020 Astrophysics Dozens of virtual impactor orbits eliminated by the EURONEAR VIMP DECam data mining project O. Vaduvescu1,2,3 , L. Curelaru4, M. Popescu5,2, B. Danila6,7, and D. Ciobanu8 1 Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Apto. 321, 38700 Santa Cruz de la Palma, Canary Islands, Spain e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), C/Via Lactea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain 3 University of Craiova, Str. A. I. Cuza nr. 13, 200585 Craiova, Romania 4 EURONEAR member, Brasov, Romania 5 Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, 5 Cutitul de Argint, 040557 Bucharest, Romania 6 Astronomical Observatory Cluj-Napoca, Romanian Academy, 15 Ciresilor Street, 400487 Cluj-Napoca, Romania 7 Department of Physics, Babes-Bolyai University, Kogalniceanu Street, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania 8 EURONEAR collaborator, Bucharest, Romania Received 15 June 2020 / Accepted 27 July 2020 ABSTRACT Context. Massive data mining of image archives observed with large etendue facilities represents a great opportunity for orbital amelioration of poorly known virtual impactor asteroids (VIs). There are more than 1000 VIs known today; most of them have very short observed arcs and many are considered lost as they became extremely faint soon after discovery. Aims. We aim to improve the orbits of VIs and eliminate their status by data mining the existing image archives. Methods. Within the European Near Earth Asteroids Research (EURONEAR) project, we developed the Virtual Impactor search using Mega-Precovery (VIMP) software, which is endowed with a very effective (fast and accurate) algorithm to predict apparitions of candidate pairs for subsequent guided human search.