The Active Asteroids Citizen Science Program: Overview and First Results
The Astronomical Journal(2024)
摘要
We present the Citizen Science program Active Asteroids and describe
discoveries stemming from our ongoing project. Our NASA Partner program is
hosted on the Zooniverse online platform and launched on 2021 August 31, with
the goal of engaging the community in the search for active asteroids –
asteroids with comet-like tails or comae. We also set out to identify other
unusual active solar system objects, such as active Centaurs, active
quasi-Hilda asteroids, and Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). Active objects are
rare in large part because they are difficult to identify, so we ask volunteers
to assist us in searching for active bodies in our collection of millions of
images of known minor planets. We produced these cutout images with our project
pipeline that makes use of publicly available Dark Energy Camera (DECam) data.
Since the project launch, roughly 8,300 volunteers have scrutinized some
430,000 images to great effect, which we describe in this work. In total we
have identified previously unknown activity on 15 asteroids, plus one Centaur,
that were thought to be asteroidal (i.e., inactive). Of the asteroids, we
classify four as active quasi-Hilda asteroids, seven as JFCs, and four as
active asteroids, consisting of one Main-belt comet (MBC) and three MBC
candidates. We also include our findings concerning known active objects that
our program facilitated, an unanticipated avenue of scientific discovery. These
include discovering activity occurring during an orbital epoch for which
objects were not known to be active, and the reclassification of objects based
on our dynamical analyses.
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关键词
Asteroid belt,Comet tails,Comae,Astronomy data analysis,CCD observation,Astronomical methods
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