1. Detecting All Known Asteroids in the Solar System Jake Schell & Christy Belardo OVERVIEW BACKGROUND This study is conducted by the Catalina Sky Survey and funded by NASA. Their mission is to specifically find all the Near Earth Objects larger than a 100-metet radius from Earth. Images are collected with three telescopes looking at the sky in search of asteroids. The telescopes records an image of the sky with approximately 30- second exposure, will move in an adjacent position to take another picture, and continue to move and take pictures for 10-minutes. When the telescope finishes the 10-minute image collecting sequence, the telescope returns to the first image location and repeats. This process allows the asteroids to move and be recorded. PARTICIPANTS FINDINGS RESULTS 2015 UW College of Education Research Symposium The Catalina Sky Survey opens their images of data to be analyzed by the public in order to find as many asteroids as they can in the images obtained. Once asteroids or other moving objects candidates have been detected, the Minor Planet Center are presented for expert observer visual review. H OW MANY STUDENTS WILL IT TAKE TO FIND THEM ALL ? J AKE S CHELL | C HRISTY B ELARDO Additionally, if each participant views 50 images, it would take 84,650 students to view the 4,232,231 images necessary to view all of our solar system’s asteroids! Detecting All Known Asteroids in the Solar System References : Asteroid Zoo. (n.d.). Retrieved 28, 2015, from http://www.asteroidzoo.org/?utm_source=ZooniverseHome&utm_medium+Web&utm_campaign=HomeCatalogue#/scien ce Based on the data analyzed, our group identified 8 asteroid within the 50 images we viewed. According to the AsteroidZoo.org crew, there is an estimated 676,205 known asteroids as of today and approximately 1000 unidentified asteroids left to find. As a citizen science project, we are attempting to locate these new asteroids. The percentage of probability that any given image has a new asteroid on it is found by: Percentage of images with asteroids: 8/50 = 16% Number of images required to view 677,205 asteroids = 677,205/16%=4,232,531 images. Percentage of new asteroids compared to total asteroids=1000/677,205=.147% Probability of any given image containing a new asteroid =.147%X16%=.024% We analyzed 50-images. Within those images, we found the following: Number of images with asteroids: 6 Total number of asteroids: 8 Number of images with artifact: 28 Total number of artifacts: 68 Number of images with “nothing”: 16 Why do we need humans? The other substantial result from our data collection concerns analyzing the data. Even as humans, it was very difficult to sift through the image sets to distinguish between artifacts, asteroids, and optical malfunctions. Because artifacts manifested themselves 28/8= 3.5 times as often as asteroids, computers may have generated this many times more asteroids than we did when considering the same data. Therefore, this sort of data is perfect for a citizen science scenario. FUTURE WORK: For any future work, we recommend better image quality. New cameras are expensive, but it would really make the process go much faster if there were fewer optical issues and consequently less artifacts. Images (Top Left to Counter Clockwise Right: student analyzing data on the computer, telescope that captures data images for analysis, example of image and a highlighted asteroid found within the image, a close up example of an asteroid.