A Novel Approach to Asteroid Identification Using Image Processing of Existing Data

Asteroids are dangerous objects for Earth, as evidenced by previous asteroid impacts that have had planet-wide effects. It is therefore important to document the orbits of asteroids in our
solar system to ensure fair warning should an asteroid approach Earth. Astronomical observatories worldwide constantly observe the sky to find new asteroids and update the orbits of
known asteroids.

Computerized methods of analyzing longitudinal astronomical image data would greatly aid in this goal. Advances here could lead to the identification of previously unknown asteroids,
greater understanding of the patterns in asteroid orbit perturbations, and more effective real-time
astronomical monitoring of our night sky.
Our project focuses on this longitudinal image analysis. We have developed a conceptual framework for how existing astronomical image data may be analyzed for unknown object
sightings as well as how these sightings may be further analyzed to document asteroids.

We have developed systems to find asteroids in images and accurately locate these images in the sky. In the process, we implemented enhancements to the methods we used to
increase their accuracy. These enhancements are unique to our work.

We have begun to use the GPU (graphical processing unit) to analyze which observations of unidentified objects could be of the same asteroid. This process involves running orbit
determination on a GPU, and is also original to our work.

Astronomy With Small Telescopes

Bohdan Paczynski

November 7, 2006

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609161v3

The All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) is monitoring all sky to about 14 mag with a cadence of about 1 day; it has discovered about 105 variable stars, most of them new. The instrument used for the survey had aperture of 7 cm. A search for planetary transits has lead to the discovery of about a dozen confirmed planets, so called ’hot Jupiters’, providing the information of planetary masses and radii. Most discoveries were done with telescopes with aperture of 10 cm.

We propose a search for optical transients covering all sky with a cadence of 10 -30 minutes and the limit of 12 - 14 mag, with an instant verification of all candidate events. The search will be made with a large number of 10 cm instruments, and the verification will be done with 30 cm instruments.

We also propose a system to be located at the L1 point of the Earth - Sun system to detect ’killer asteroids’. With a limiting magnitude of about 18 mag it could detect 10 m boulders several hours prior to their impact, provide warning against Tunguska-like events, as well as to provide news about spectacular but harmless more modest impacts.

Discovery of a Jupiter/Saturn Analog with Gravitational Microlensing

B.S. Gaudi1, D.P. Bennett, A. Udalski, A. Gould,
G.W. Christie, D. Maoz, S. Dong, J. McCormick,
M.K. Szymanski, P.J. Tristram, S. Nikolaev,
B. Paczynski,
M. Kubiak, G. Pietrzynski, I. Soszynski3,
O. Szewczyk, K. Ulaczyk, Ł. Wyrzykowski,
(The OGLE Collaboration) D.L. DePoy, C. Han, S. Kaspi,
C.-U. Lee, F. Mallia, T. Natusch, R.W. Pogge, B.-G. Park,
(The μFUN Collaboration)
F. Abe, I.A. Bond, C.S. Botzler, A. Fukui, J.B. Hearnshaw,
Y. Itow, K. Kamiya, A.V. Korpela, P.M. Kilmartin, W. Lin1,
K. Masuda, Y. Matsubara, M. Motomura, Y. Muraki, S. Nakamura,
T. Okumura, K. Ohnishi, N.J. Rattenbury, T. Sako, To. Saito,
S. Sato, L. Skuljan, D.J. Sullivan, T. Sumi, W.L. Sweatman,
P.C.M. Yock,
(The MOA Collaboration)
M.D. Albrow, A. Allan, J.-P. Beaulieu, M.J. Burgdorf, K.H. Cook,
C. Coutures, M. Dominik, S. Dieters, P. Fouque, J. Greenhill,
K. Horne, I. Steele, Y. Tsapras,
(From the PLANET and RoboNet Collaborations)
B. Chaboyer, A. Crocker, S. Frank, B. Macintosh

March 19, 2008

http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1920v2


Searches for extrasolar planets have uncovered an astonishing diversity of
planetary systems, yet the frequency of solar system analogs remains unknown.
The gravitational microlensing planet search method is potentially sensitive to
multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except
Mercury. We report the detection of a multiple-planet system with microlensing.
We identify two planets with masses of