Scientists all over the world are searching the skies daily for asteroids that might one day slam into Earth. Correction: Scientists all over the Northern Hemisphere are conducting such searches.

Asteroids in the Southern Hemisphere could be approaching this very moment, preparing for a cosmic sucker punch that could destroy a city, or even render the planet unlivable.

While the folks who look for these possibly threatening Near Earth Objects (NEOs) don't suspect there are any sleepers preparing an imminent pounce from below, they do generally agree that any effective search effort needs to include more than just half the heavens.

"Many object that can only be discovered in the southern skies, because they never venture into the northern nighttime sky, are grossly underrepresented in the statistics because of the limited amount of previous work in the southern hemisphere," said Robert H. McNaught of the Australian National University.

Soon, a telescope down under will begin scanning the southern skies. McNaught, his colleagues, and astronomers at the University of Arizona will work together to refurbish a little-used telescope at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory.

Over the next two years, the photographic, 26-inch Uppsala Schmidt Telescope will be equipped with computer pointing controls, automatic detection software, and a sensitive electronic detector array that will provide a large field in search of moving asteroids.

McNaught said the effectiveness of the new program will depend on several factors, including how many objects are already found when the new search starts. He expects, however, that this search will likely find more objects than a comparable program in the north.

Until the refurbishment is complete, McNaught is making follow-up observations of potentially hazardous objects found in the north, but which have traveled south and out of the range of the northern telescopes. These follow-up observations, with a 1-meter telescope at Siding Spring, are critical in deriving an accurate orbit that will determine if the object might one day impact the Earth, scientists said. McNaught told explorezone.com that this might be the most valuable aspect of the project.