Nearly anyone can detect an asteroid using NASA’s new desktop application

Thanks to NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter contest, the public can play with a new software application that has the potential to increase the number of new asteroids discovered by amateur astronomers. 

Eros, the first of an asteroid taken from an orbiting spacecraft.

The application is based on an algorithm which proved a 15% increase in positively identifying new asteroids between Mars and Jupiter during testing.

At the South by Southwest Festival in Texas, NASA representatives discussed how citizen scientists have made a different in asteroid hunting. They also announced the release of a desktop software application based on the contest algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids.

You don’t have to be a NASA scientist to work the application— it can be used by amateur astronomers and citizen scientists.

Traditionally, astronomers find asteroids by taking images of the same place in the sky and looking for star-like objects to move between frames.

The approach has been used since before Pluto was discovered in 1930, but now that more telescopes are scanning the sky, the enormous volume of data makes it impossible for astronomers to verify each detection by hand. 

This new algorithm gives astronomers the ability to use computers to autonomously and rapidly check the images and determine which objects are suitable for follow up. The result is the ability to find more asteroids than previously possible.

The desktop software application is free and can be used on any basic desktop or laptop computer so that amateur astronomers can take images from their telescopes and analyze them.

Prediscovery image of asteroid 1999 AN10 taken from
the Palomar Digital Sky Survey.
The faint streak is the trail left by the asteroid.

The application will tell the user whether a matching asteroid record exists and offer a way to report new findings to the Minor Planet Center, which then confirms and archives new discoveries.

Download the asteroid-hunting application here and get started.

Learn more at NASA.