Asteroid Zoo Talk

How well are we going, or is this a complete waste of everyones time?

  • Trigona by Trigona

    It's possible that I've missed this but I would like a stickie that informs us about how many asteroids we've discovered, (if any) and generally give info about these discoveries. Also a tally of people who are the first to observe an asteroid - I want to know if there are any "asteroid whisperers" out there.
    There is a community of asteroid hunters that just need a little support and feedback to get motivated - atm I feel very alone

    Posted

  • meegja by meegja

    I agree but there are some problems.

    Firstly this project is as fresh as can be. I don't know how much data is there but I think several months will pass until the first results are known.

    Another problem is that the vast majority of what we are detecting are asteroid candidates. As I understood it, it can take years before a sighting can be confirmed. I presume that there is a prediction algorithm (or whatever it's called) and when that prediction comes true, only then it can be confirmed as an asteroid.

    Having said that: it would be indeed kinda cool to have a list of these "asteroid whisperers" (nice description btw 😃 ) who detect candidates. For now all we can do ourselves is to mark it as Favorite but an automated something would be nice 😃

    I was amongst the old SETI users (before they used that cold, static, non-personal BOINC thing) and indeed it was kind of motivating to compare results. For Asteroidzoo that would be even better because that is based on human observation and not raw computer power 😃

    Posted

  • Almatheo by Almatheo

    This whole thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth, the heading on the front page says it all: 'Hunt for Resource-Rich Asteroids'. There's no pure science here at all, no intrinsic pride (as Trigona suggested above) for us as asteroid spotters in having identified asteroids, no recognition of our efforts, I feel we're doing the work of a commercial outfit for free. If it's all for commercial gain the implication might be that asteroids which are extremely interesting in other ways (e.g. dangerous, or scientifically useful or just curious) might be ignored.

    Whoever organised this has gone about it in completely the wrong way.

    I am out of here.

    Posted

  • 02967erse by 02967erse

    Have a look at the following:

    https://www.zooniverse.org/publications

    In particular follow the link to the paper describing the discovery of one of the Neptune trojans, 2011 HM102. In its appendix, you'll see that the "Ice Hunters" involved, i.e. citizen scientists, did get recognition for their efforts (as I hope we will if we've made some discoveries). And as for this project, it sounds as if there might be some news on the BBC's next episode of "The Sky at Night".

    Posted

  • a349 by a349

    I participated in the Ice Hunters campaign.
    The had a feature that is unfortunately NOT AVAILABLE here.
    They gave continuously the total number of images, the number of images that were
    already scanned, the number of detected candidates, and the number of verified detection.
    I think that Asteroid Zoo should also add these numbers.

    Posted

  • meegja by meegja in response to a349's comment.

    Totally agreed.

    But there can be a downside: a lot of people are competitive by nature. So there is a change that sets will rushed to get as much sets finished as soon as possible. With that then also the change that only the most obvious candidates will be reported but because of the rush the more faint ones will not be seen.

    Posted

  • a349 by a349

    The same sets are given to few (many) observers. After 10 or 15 observers and only if it is of high quality it can be marked as finished.
    In the case of low quality images you do not need even so many.
    All these images were already mined by the Catalina Sky Survey using automatic routines. The also calculate for each image which
    known asteroid (NEO) should be in this part of the sky.

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

    I'm preparing an update for AsteroidZoo that will go on today. We're working on the number of images observed - and how many things have been found - but we need to make sure that we do the right thing for the science.

    Posted

  • Emili_Sancha by Emili_Sancha in response to Dr.Asteroid's comment.

    Do you remember that is necesary a clean up for the repeating set of images?

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

    Yes. We are getting that addressed. Mark them as #bad_set (or one of the other hashtags that says that) and we're going to fix them.

    Posted

  • Nabil_Shaban by Nabil_Shaban

    This may be an old complaint, but I'm a newcomer.

    I think what would be useful is if each "asteroid candidate" set gave certain vital information - namely the time interval between images, and secondly, where in the star-field the images are covering, e.g name any constellation and stars within the image frame, including the celestial co-ordinates - and third, the size of the sky in arc seconds (giving us an idea of the depth). Not giving this minimal information, I feel shows little respect for the time and effort we volunteer Asteroid Hunters give.

    I also agree with Almatheo - that I am working for free, not to contribute towards the progress of astro-science (or help save the planet from hazardous asteroids - big joke) but to help a private corporation make profits from "Resource-Rich Asteroids". I am not interested in furthering monetary gains of some private capitalist enterprise.

    Posted

  • CTidwell3 by CTidwell3

    Time interval between information has been mentioned here:

    http://talk.asteroidzoo.org/#/boards/BAZ0000003/discussions/DAZ00002a3

    I agree that location and size of image will also be useful, but guessing there may need to be a bit of coding get this on the zooniverse project site. Since we are talking about taking larger images, broking them up into smaller sized and displayed here, the real question would be whether that information that would be available for the larger image is also broken up and passed with each set, or whether the plan was to translate markings we made back into the original image to find location.

    Eventually having a FAQ with some of these common questions will also be a help down the road.

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin in response to Nabil Shaban's comment.

    Hello - and thank you for you time.

    At this time, we don't provide the image location on the sky - although several folks have been able to work out where individual frames came from. There's nothing wrong with it - and it's something that we'd consider in the future. One of the big troubles in citizen science is making sure that people see the same data to ensure that we understand how the data product comes together. This is a problem that other citizen scientist projects have - if someone knew all the information about the image, in principle it could be worked out where all the known asteroids are. That would change the data about their performance in a way that would potentially trip up the analysis of how people find asteroids.

    But to mention the first part, the information about the images is now in the FAQ that I'm starting up on the front page to make sure it's as accessible as possible.

    Now - in the fullness of time, all the data (18 TB of images) will be available for anyone who wants it. We've partnered with Amazon Public Datasets to host all of it on the web. Setting up the archive to ensure that it's useful will take some time - it's on the list of things to do, but it will take time.

    For your last point - while it is certainly possible that a resource rich asteroid will be discovered/improved/analyzed with this data, that's not why we're doing it. This is part of our contribution to the science of asteroids and all the results will be public and published in the literature when they're ready. We won't keep any results back at all.

    Posted

  • Cpt._Pete by Cpt._Pete

    And if you find an Asteroid made of Diamond.............PLEASE.....don't tell my wife 😃

    Posted

  • SkyFall56 by SkyFall56 in response to Dr.Asteroid's comment.

    I am relatively new here and just a suggestion that a banner across the top to show asteroids found and a maybe a new tab with a link to the data set/pictures would be nice for those who are not sure if they are seeing something of importance or not. I find myself questioning what if anything I have found is relevant or not. How long before things we have tagged are looked at and some feedback on these tags if they are asteroids would nice. It is addictive though and I appreciate your considerations on my thoughts.

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin in response to SkyFall56's comment.

    We're in the process of making sure we understand how the zoo is working (i.e., how many people need to designate the same object before we submit it). And right now we're also going through and fixing the bad alignment problem. When we have results, we will be presenting them.

    Posted

  • bc2callhome by bc2callhome

    Can we name any asteroids that we find Bill

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

    There does not seem to be an asteroid named "Bill". However, names that aren't tied to a particular person are typically rejected by the IAU. For example, "Bob Hope" would be acceptable, but "Bob" wouldn't be. (There is an asteroid 2829 Bobhope as a matter of fact)

    Posted

  • Meanjean4321 by Meanjean4321 in response to Trigona's comment.

    i found a new one about a month ago and im excited to see what happens.

    Posted

  • jgulvas by jgulvas

    How do I know I've seen something no one else has seen? I don't think that just because I see something moving and no one has commented on it, that it is newly discovered. And if in fact I did find something none of the other Zoo Universe participants located in the frame sets, how do I know if it is completely undiscovered, even by the organizers?

    Posted