HSU-Hosted Asteroid Search Up and Running
A university-based platform which allows high schools to search for asteroids and other space objects is up and running, and the initial results are very encouraging. The search initiative, which began in early October, can already claim one new asteroid (credited to a student in Fayetteville, NC) and numerous confirmations of near-Earth objects (large boulders of rock which could potentially hit the Earth), requested by the Minor Planet Center at Harvard, which verify other astronomers' discoveries. Students who made the measurements from the images to confirm the discoveries were credited by the Minor Planet Center as part of the discovery team.
Working with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (UC Berkeley), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO; Blanco, Chile), and the Las Cumbres Observatory (Santa Barbara, CA), Hardin-Simmons University is the site of a pilot program in the search for new asteroids. Asteroids are large boulders of rock that orbit the Sun at an average distance of 300 million miles, three times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Originally planned to wrap up at the end of October, the program will continue through Nov. 8. The extension accommodates interference of the full moon and timing needed to get images from CTIO out of Chile. "I'm expecting the last round of images from Chile after the new moon passes in the coming two or three days," says faculty coordinator Patrick Miller, associate professor of mathematics at HSU. "With the new images, I'm hopeful that we'll identify several new unknown asteroids and make the follow-up image requests."
Five high schools are participating in the pilot program which began Oct 1. Four are located in the United States and the fifth is in Poland. Physics classes from these schools access HSU Blackboard, where astronomical images from CTIO have been prepared and placed into folders. After analysis, the results are returned to HSU where follow up images are coordinated with the Las Cumbres Observatory. Each new discovery is announced and catalogued by the Minor Planet Center.
Patrick Miller and HSU honors student, Jeff Davis, coordinate and are in charge of the program. Davis manages the image processing and follow-up image requests, as required by the Minor Planet Center for the official recognition of a discovery. Davis was among the HSU students who went to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory during May term 2006. These students were enrolled in Mr. Miller's field course, PHSC 3099 "Topics in Planetary Science." Davis learned how to process images and search for asteroids. On his own, he returned to the Lab in July 2006 where he continued his studies and began preparing for this international pilot program.
Pilot programs almost inevitably have bugs that need to be worked out, but the asteroid search platform has worked as advertised. The one setback participants encountered was the loss of the Las Cumbres Observatory, and the use of its two meter telescope to obtain follow-up images of unknown asteroids. This necessitated a switch to the .8 meter telescope in Charleston, IL (Astronomical Research Institute) which needs perfect weather to obtain the resolution needed to see objects as faint as those the Las Cumbres facility records. "We're going to work with the Fayetteville high school after Nov. 18 to see if we can fix this," says Miller.
Miller sees the program as win-win for HSU, "Astronomy students at Hardin-Simmons University are able to do real science...beyond the classroom and lab kind of science. The discoveries they make are important to astronomy and astrophysics...professional astronomers follow up on these discoveries with research projects of their own. These international programs run through the Internet and highlight Hardin-Simmons. This, hopefully, will attract new students to the campus."
Although this is a 30-day pilot program, the long term plan is to have an ongoing program for high schools and colleges. The schools can integrate the program into their physics and astronomy labs.
Miller is looking forward to expanding search campaigns in the future. "We're looking at another asteroid search in March 2007 followed by a supernovae (exploding stars) search in October 2007, and a Kuiper Best objects (ice boulders out past Neptune) search in March 2008." Again, these discoveries will be original with the participating schools receiving recognized, published credit by the Minor Planet Center and the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
Davis will present the results of this pilot program in papers at two professional meetings, Lunar & Planetary Science Conference (NASA JSC; March 2007) and Hands-On Universe Conference (Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago; June 2007).
Written by Dave Coffield
HSU Director of Public Relations
dcoffield@hsutx.edu