The Daily Minor Planet citizen science project is growing. It now uses data from a second telescope. This means more chances for people to help find asteroids.
New Data from the Bok Telescope
The project already gets data from the Mt. Lemmon telescope in Arizona. Now, it also processes images from the Bok 2.3-meter telescope. The Bok telescope is at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It is run by the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. This telescope looks for new near-Earth objects (NEOs). These are asteroids that cross Earth’s path.
The Bok telescope provides deeper views. It can see objects two to three times fainter than the Mt. Lemmon telescope. Computer programs often struggle with these faint objects. But humans are good at finding patterns in this kind of data. This makes citizen scientists' help even more important.
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Start Your News DetoxMost of the new data from the Bok telescope comes from the ecliptic. This is the part of the sky where asteroids and comets usually travel. The project team believes this deeper, ecliptic-focused data will help them find and confirm more main-belt asteroids. It will also bring in many new near-Earth asteroid candidates.
Look for new Bok data sets as they are added. They will be more challenging but also more rewarding.
The Daily Minor Planet is a citizen science project on Zooniverse. It uses data from the Catalina Sky Survey. Anyone with a laptop or smartphone can join.
