_version_ 1866911798468280320
author Chandler, Colin Orion
Trujillo, Chadwick A.
Oldroyd, William J.
Kueny, Jay K.
Burris, William A.
Hsieh, Henry H.
DeSpain, Jarod A.
Sedaghat, Nima
Sheppard, Scott S.
Farrell, Kennedy A.
Trilling, David E.
Gustafsson, Annika
Magbanua, Mark Jesus Mendoza
Mazzucato, Michele T.
Bosch, Milton K. D.
Shaw-Diaz, Tiffany
Gonano, Virgilio
Lamperti, Al
Campos, José A. da Silva
Goodwin, Brian L.
Terentev, Ivan A.
Dukes, Charles J. A.
Deen, Sam
author_facet Chandler, Colin Orion
Trujillo, Chadwick A.
Oldroyd, William J.
Kueny, Jay K.
Burris, William A.
Hsieh, Henry H.
DeSpain, Jarod A.
Sedaghat, Nima
Sheppard, Scott S.
Farrell, Kennedy A.
Trilling, David E.
Gustafsson, Annika
Magbanua, Mark Jesus Mendoza
Mazzucato, Michele T.
Bosch, Milton K. D.
Shaw-Diaz, Tiffany
Gonano, Virgilio
Lamperti, Al
Campos, José A. da Silva
Goodwin, Brian L.
Terentev, Ivan A.
Dukes, Charles J. A.
Deen, Sam
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_09768
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Active Asteroids Citizen Science Program: Overview and First Results
Chandler, Colin Orion
Trujillo, Chadwick A.
Oldroyd, William J.
Kueny, Jay K.
Burris, William A.
Hsieh, Henry H.
DeSpain, Jarod A.
Sedaghat, Nima
Sheppard, Scott S.
Farrell, Kennedy A.
Trilling, David E.
Gustafsson, Annika
Magbanua, Mark Jesus Mendoza
Mazzucato, Michele T.
Bosch, Milton K. D.
Shaw-Diaz, Tiffany
Gonano, Virgilio
Lamperti, Al
Campos, José A. da Silva
Goodwin, Brian L.
Terentev, Ivan A.
Dukes, Charles J. A.
Deen, Sam
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
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.
title The Active Asteroids Citizen Science Program: Overview and First Results
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09768