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| Paper: |
Asteroid Detection by Citizen Scientists–Using Images from Pan-STARRS and the Catalina Sky Survey |
| Volume: |
537, ASP 2022: A Virtual Conference |
| Page: |
17 |
| Authors: |
Miller, P. |
| Abstract: |
The International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) is an online educational outreach program for citizen scientists including students and amateur astronomers, who make original detections of near-Earth objects (NEOs) and Main Belt asteroids. Located at http://iasc.cosmosearch.org/, images taken recently at Pan-STARRS (University of Hawaii) and Catalina Sky Survey (University of Arizona) are provided to citizen scientists. Using the software Astrometrica, they search these images making original asteroid detections and submitting their astrometry to IASC. A professional team of measurers in IASC validates the detections then reports them to Minor Planet Center (Harvard). IASC was founded at Hardin-Simmons University (Abilene, TX) in October 2006. Each year 45,000 citizen scientists, participating in teams of 3-5, search through 28,000 images. They participate worldwide from 89 countries, and have detected >10,000 asteroids, not observed by the large sky surveys. To date a total of 80 asteroids including 2 NEOs, 1 Jupiter-family comet, and 7 Kuiper Belt objects have been numbered by the International Astronomical Union. These number objects have been officially named by their citizen science discoverers. IASC is a program funded by the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office (Washington, DC) , Grants \#80NSSC18K0855 and \#80NSSC21K0984. Participation is free to any interested citizen scientist located anywhere in the world. All that is needed is a Windows-based computer platform and access to the Internet. |
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