Update from Dr. Patrick Miller - June 4th

Greetings from the International Astronomical Search Collaboration

Lots of Image Sets Available

There are two image sets in each of the school folders. Some of you already have three. More image sets from June 4th will be upladed later today.

Check your folder!!

Purpose of ARI Image Sets

The image sets that your students analyze are taken by the ARI Observatory (Westfield, IL). The Observatory has a contract with NASA to do follow-ups of near-Earth Objects, as part of the Near-Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA).

Each image set has an NEO target, probably located close to the center. The NEO target is a previously-discovered object, usually discovered in the past few days but sometimes years in the past. You need to measure the target as this provides information that NASA needs to better predict the orbit. After you have done this measurement then you look around the rest of the image for any undiscovered asteroids.

Usuallly these undiscovered asteroids reside in the Main Belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. If your students make a discovery then IASC has to complete the follow-up process for you.

The Minor Planet Center requires than any Main Belt asteroid discovery be re-imaged within 7-days of the discovery. This is called the "follow-up process". If the follow-up process is not completed the discovery is considered lost.

Most of the measurements that your students are reporting as asteroid discoveries are, in fact, false signatures. Students tend to click on anything that moves in an image set, but not all that appears to be moving are asteroids. They are usually artifacts (bad or hot pixels) in the image that need to be ignored.

On average students will find a new asteroid once every fourth or fifth image set...and not in every set.

In the meanwhile, check your folder, and...

Happy Hunting!!

Dr. Patrick Miller