All India Asteroid Search Campaign

- An Asteroid Hunt!

May 17^th – June 30^th (Phase I) &

July 1^st – Aug 13th (Phase II)

Workshops on:

May 7th and June 30th

Hunt and find an Asteroid! If you find it, you get to name it!

In our endeavour to bring the best opportunities from across the globe to our schools in research in astronomy and space sciences, SPACE is happy to announce an exciting opportunity for school children to be involved in real time experimentation and to be at the forefront of research at the international level by finding an asteroid!

The International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) is an educational outreach program which includes Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley and Global Hands-on-Universe Association (USA). Using images taken in the night with the 24" and 32" telescopes at the Astronomical Research Institute (ARI) Observatory located at Charleston, USA, students can make original discoveries of Main Belt asteroids and important observations that contribute to the NASA Near-Earth Object (NEO) Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Currently, 11 countries on 4 continents are participating. The ‘International Asteroid Search Campaign’ involves using the software to sift through data files provided by IASC and spot moving objects which could be new Asteroids! If you actually discover one, it will be named after you, and students from other countries have in fact done so in the last campaign this month.

SPACE has worked out a programme with “International Astronomical Search Collaboration” USA to search for new asteroids. This highly prestigious program will enable students to work in parallel with professional astronomers and expose them to the actual research being done in the field of astronomy. Skills on using astronomical software for data analysis will be imparted to the participants. The prospect of finding their own ‘asteroid’ and getting to name it will surely stimulate young minds! SPACE can involve 45 schools to participate with us in this ‘IASC’ as part of two phases! Please spread the word!

SPACE will conduct a training workshop in Delhi for the selected teachers to introduce the ‘All India Asteroid Search Campaign’ program and to conduct training on using the software to analyse the data. Teachers then in turn will train the selected students and run the programs with them.The workshops will be conducted on 7th May and 30th June.

The IASC will be run in two phases -

Phase I May 17^th – June 30^th

Phase II July 1^st – Aug 13^th

Frequently Asked Questions for this program:

http://organisationspace.blogspot.com/2010/04/asteroid-search-campaign-faqs.html

To find out more about this program, visit the websites:

http://iasc.hsutx.edu/

http://www.handsonuniverse.org/research/iasc/index.html

We are excited to introduce this program into India this year! SPACE hopes that one of our schools will indeed find an asteroid, so good luck with the Asteroid Hunt! Please contact us at aiasc2010@space-india.org to find out more.