Asteroid Zoo Talk

Are we wasting our time here?

  • hightower73 by hightower73

    It seems to me that after marking over 300 asteriods, noone seems to have checked the boards for new asteriod reports, or even to update the site about any new findings or anything.

    so my question is are we really wasting out time here and should we be considering taking our efforts else where.

    Posted

  • mboschmd by mboschmd

    It does seem that there is virtually no Moderator or Scientist presence on these posts...I've had questions up for over 3 months and they still await answers.

    Not only that, and the issue you cited above: I haven't seen a Known asteroid in approximately 1,200 sets. It feels like I'm getting nothing but asteroid-less, noisy, and low-quality sets by design. I'm lucky to find one in 100 sets these days. Such was not the case several thousand sets ago.

    Posted

  • Barbalbero by Barbalbero

    I hope we will have soon god news about our discoveries, at least to know if sets already studied have been taken into consideration for submission to Minor Planet Center

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I'll see if I can do a check-in with the science team. I can't promise they'll respond... scientists are often very busy folks! ... but I'll see what I can do. At the very least, I'll try to get you a status update.

    I can promise that, no matter what, you're not wasting your time... even if the scientists stop producing anything, we'll open-source the data at the end, so others can have a crack at it. 😃

    Thanks for sticking around!

    Posted

  • Barbalbero by Barbalbero in response to DZM's comment.

    It will be nice to know at least if some of the images we have studied have been taken into consideration and submitted for confirmation, some images obtained marks from about 10 people who think there are asteroids, so I think it is a good number of marks and I think these images can be sent to the Minor Planet Center to have some more info

    Posted

  • peterbees by peterbees

    I agree with these posters that there is a serious lack of team presence in this project. Also we seem to have run out of asteroid candidates. A couple of hundred sets since I made a firm pick (a few iffy ones which will probably be tossed out as spurious... ). Even the so-called #asteroids in the Discuss page seem to be artifacts mis-identified by novice participants - could be wrong here, since we are unable to subject the collection sets to the same process as the original presentation. But, has NO ONE seen an asteroid in the past week?

    I really hope the principals have trained their algorithms well, because the way things are going the Asteroid Zoo effort looks to have reached its use-by date. Be kind and put it to rest unless you have the resources to maintain the system properly, and can give us participants some feedback and some sort of recognition for the time and effort.

    It's probably naive to think that previously unknown objects can be confirmed to the degree that a new name is warranted for the forseeable future, but maybe a number of plausible candidates might be acknowledged?
    Nah - we're all just training computers to do the job quicker and cheaper, and without pesky questions or complaints.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I've emailed the Asteroid Zoo science team and let them know that their community here would really like an update!

    I'll send additional notes if we don't hear anything back for a week or so.

    I promise that your hard work, comments, and efforts are hugely valued here at the Zooniverse; thank you all so much for what you do!

    Posted

  • Barbalbero by Barbalbero in response to DZM's comment.

    Thanks for the info, DZM
    I really hope the efforts of all the hunters of Asteroid Zoo will be recognized soon, I know many people gave a huge effort during these months. I work in the field of Astrophysics, and it is a great to have the opportunity to participate here to this project. I hope some of the candidates I have marked will results on a new asteroid, it will mean my contribution to this project was not negligible and it will be also really nice and important for me, it is always great to contribute in a new discovery

    Posted

  • hightower73 by hightower73

    ive seen a few already known about asteriods in the past week, but im seeing posts where they were last seen 6 months ago and the person has said asteriod but not studied.

    yes it does seem as though our community is runing into a head wind and getting no further forward. i agree there is very little commitment from the main staff in keeping thier community up to date and the lack of info and feedback is very sparse. i understand they are very busy with other jobs but surey half an hour a wek to cheak in is not unreasonable to keep us up to date.

    thanks for listening to us dzm and hope to hear from them very soon

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    If you'd like, while waiting for the scientists to get back to us, there are also tons of other Zooniverse projects that could use some extra brainpower! Many of them are astronomy-related, too. They'd love to have you! Of course, as I said before, even if you continue to classify here, the data will be eventually open-sourced, so you're not wasting your time.

    But, yes, I promise, I will not forget you all at Asteroid Zoo. I check this page every day, so it will be a constant reminder to me until the science team gets back in touch! 😃

    Posted

  • ladyt by ladyt

    Yea I found one the other day and it didn't show up as an already known asteroid. Would really like to know.

    Posted

  • Barbalbero by Barbalbero in response to DZM's comment.

    Thanks for the information you are writing. There are messages wrote in July by Administrators of this project where they wrote they were going to give results soon, they just wanted to be sure to have the correct scientific results. 4 passed from that, and we do not have at least an update from them, it is sad especially for those who use these projects as the only possibility to obtain scientific results

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Still waiting... I'll give them a few days to respond before I pester them again. 😃

    Posted

  • peterbees by peterbees

    Thank DZM, Barbalbero and Hightower73 (as well as many others). Potentially this is a great project. There are many good suggestions how to engage users better. Take a look. Think about it. And look to the future.
    Ta ta.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I will be sending another message to the science team tomorrow... All that I can do is ask them to drop by.

    If you want to do other projects while waiting for a response, I certainly do not blame you!!

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

    Your point is entirely reasonable We're a small team - and in addition to Asteroid Zoo , we are also building spacecraft. One of them was destroyed by teh Antares rocket failure.

    Frankly, we bit off more than we could chew at - since we had to have the spacecraft software working, that took resources away from this project. We're recovering now, but you're entirely right to be annoyed at our slowness. I am working to resolve this issue.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Just to add to @Dr.Asteroid , there's talk -- though nothing concrete yet, so no promises -- that the team might be getting some additional support soon, in which case they should have a far greater presence here on Talk.

    Hopefully we'll have an update along those lines in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned! 😃

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

    So - here's what I can say with confidence - we've moved the relevant data and are operating on it in the Amazon Web Services (since they are the folks providing all the storage for this effort) and we're working down to make sure we're correctly interpreting the data that you've generated.

    The trick has been going back into the images and modifying the astronomical routines that we have to extract the brightness data and making sure that we can correctly parse the positional and brightness data back into the known asteroid dataset.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Thank you for the detailed update, @Dr.Asteroid !! Really good to hear that this is continuing to progress. 😃

    Posted

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

    thanks for the reply, I hope to have other good news soon

    Posted

  • hightower73 by hightower73

    cant way to see an asteroid called hightower73. would be cool

    Posted

  • hightower73 by hightower73

    is thinking of leaving, im getting a bit tired of marking #badset on sets when others have looked at them and not bothered to mark them, feels like most of the time thats all i do, not seen a " your the first to see this image " in weeks now. feels like im following others footprints and getting no where.

    am i only one to feel like this?

    Posted

  • Noharrr by Noharrr

    The (now retired) Ice Hunters project (also asteroid-hunting) had a couple of automated features that this site (and every ZOO project that is about discovering anything) could really use. Planet Hunters comes to mind: I never understood why the very successful software features of Ice Hunters weren't migrated over to something as significant as discovering planets. (?)

    For each object marked, the program would automatically kick up a list of all others (by usename) who had marked that object, in chronological order (cuz it's a computer program, right).

    And because that list was automated, the "discoverer" (first ZOOite on the button) was actually, formally, accredited (me! one! tho' I was 400th down the accreditation list . . . still sent me over the moon. I can remember the feeling to this day).

    I find this kind of incentive currently lacking in ZOO projects that involve discovering something. Yes, the scientists are busy folk, but thanks to a bit of front-end programming, Ice Hunters was one of the programs I enjoyed most:

    I loved scanning the list of names on an object, spotting the really prolific Hunters, and seeing how close I had come to "first".

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I've alerted the science team back to this thread again. They have a proposal due, but they'll be here soon, hopefully!

    Posted

  • Meanjean4321 by Meanjean4321

    maybe i should write here then if you check it. i have a previous post where i found 3 very good asteroids in the same set then it all froze up. i would like to add it to my favorites and get credit if i can. thx

    Posted

  • djsimister by djsimister

    @Noharrr
    very good points regarding the ice hunters project. I too was a prolific ice hunter gatherer! It was very addictive for the reasons you have given. I also remember how much it gave back to Its participant. Respectful of your hard work acknowledged by way of instant credits as you go! It was it set up in such a way that it most certainly kept you interested and wanting. Indeed, a top drawer, model citizen science project.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    A question, @Noharrr ... I wasn't around during the Ice Hunters project, so I may need help on this...

    What was to dissuade people from just marking all over the place, hoping to get their name somewhere, or even just flat-out spamming? I would be concerned about that, about people's desire to be credited as a discoverer influencing how they classified objects. Was there any sort of control in place?

    Thank you!

    Also, @Meanjean4321 ... I'm incredibly sorry, but I'm not sure how much I can do to help you. If you didn't complete the classification (because it froze, I know, not fair), it might not be recorded anywhere, so nobody would have any way to figure out what object you were working on. I'm correct in understanding that you don't know which image set that was? I just don't know how we could locate it.. I'm sorry! Freezes like that shouldn't happen. 😦

    Posted

  • Dr.Asteroid by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

    @Noharr - while I suppose you could just mark everything willy nilly - that won't actually work well for finding things. Since they have to be four in a row - the possibility of getting a hit (remember - the minorplanet center will be the ultimate arbiter if something is found) is basically zero.

    @Meanjean4321 - if it doesn't save - there's nothing we can do. I'm sorry about that. There will be other times and chances.

    Thank you for your time!

    Posted

  • bc2callhome by bc2callhome

    Sir Any ideas on when the results will be in and when we can name them Many thanks and happy holidays Bill

    Posted

  • hightower73 by hightower73

    any word yet admin??? were still all waiting, in fact the only thin i really do now is look at the boards, till i get some reports of whats been found im not doing anymore hunting !!!!!!!!!

    Posted

  • mboschmd by mboschmd

    I'm done with Asteroid Zoo. This is a For-Profit venture, that started as Arkyd Astronomics. a deliberately vague and ambiguous name to help the company hide their asteroid-mining agenda and keep it secret. Do you remember Dr. Asteroid or Chris Lewicki mentioning the For Profit status of Planetary Resources? In the video, did they mention that the real purpose of our slave labor is to help them become billionaires? Of course not...we heard about helping identify Earth Killer asteroids and smaller NEOs, with a brief mention that an identified asteroid might be mined one day...an asteroid that you discovered. The language clearly implied that we'd get credit for our work.

    I know every single person who joined Asteroid Zoo fully expected to get feedback at a bare minimum, and credit for new finds. We've been working for 18 months without a whiff of either.Citizen Scientists do not live on bread alone. We expect recognition for our hard work, and credit where credit is due. If you cannot at least give us that, then please....keep all your data proprietary, and do the work yourselves. We get nothing but empty promises from Asteroid Zoo.

    I never expected such neglect....such a poorly run site...and so much baloney. There was zero intention from the start of this project to give us credit, as is obvious by the complete lack of a ready answer to the many questions asked about credit. No other topic has been brought up so often, as the questions about getting the credit we deserve for work done. It has gone unanswered for a year and a half, now. The last time Dr. Asteroid responded to this thread was over a year ago.

    Unappreciated, unacknowledged and ignored no more...Adios, Profiteers.

    DZM, thanks for trying to do Dr. Asteroid's job for him.. Your efforts are appreciated, please know that. You did the best you could with a less-than-ideal situation.

    Posted

  • hightower73 by hightower73 in response to mboschmd's comment.

    @mboschmd I have been speaking to several people in zooniverse in the past couple of days, namely victoria ( my boss at shakespearsworld) and Grant Miller who is the new director of sciences here at zooniverse ( he took over dzm who left to go to another project and was promoted ), and i have it in an email that they and the whole of zooniverse is now aware of our situation, the projects reputation and our worries and these people are trying to get results as we speak.

    I have added other posts to this subject on the boards and we are waiting for an update either from @dr.asteroid or @pravik7 within the next few days.

    That said i can totally understand your feelings and rest assured quite a few others share your sentaments exactly.

    Just hold on for the next couple of weeks and lets see what transpiries.

    Posted

  • leonie_van_vliet by leonie_van_vliet

    In respons to mboschmd's & hightower73's comments

    Been on Asteroid Hunters from the beginning and an optimist I like to second hightower73's advice. If Grant Miller has taken over
    he might surprise you mboschmd...
    I am on most projects and feel appreciated in silence and enjoy to see whats out there in our solar system and beyond in the Cosmos

    Don't give up yet, being a volunteer only and no scientist I am always happy to see another user-name next to mine!
    Leonie van Vliet from: The Netherlands! ❀

    Posted

  • jphenness by jphenness

    It is amazing to clearly see deep sky objects that are out of range of my telescope. And there is the odd asteroid as a bonus.

    Posted

  • thisisjaid by thisisjaid

    @mboschmd - thanks for that, good heads up before I spend additional time on this. i'll focus my efforts on other projects.

    Posted

  • stevef602 by stevef602

    I'm not a scientist, I deal in practical matters. Having said that, this project is a practical one, and not so much scientific, the science has been done far in the past. Given the thousands of hours thus far wasted one the endeavor, I might suggest the data so far collected be given to the University of Arizona. The grad students there may be able to refine the constraints their Gaussian functions to get a usable algorithm. Catalina itself may be interested in the data.

    In respect to the sponsors of the project, their problems may be deeper than just lack of communication. It's just my experience, but when one party to a contact, social or otherwise, quits communicating, it many times is a signal of non-performance or malfeasance. Even though we are only volunteers, there is enough consideration by both the volunteers and the sponsor to make a contract. IF YOU DO THIS, WE WILL DO THIS. That is a contract. We volunteers are not the only parties entangled in this project. NASA for one is a partner, and If memory serves, there saw some grant money(s) involved. I've sat on the vocal sidelines until present, but something concrete must produced, success or failure. Enough data has now been collected to produce a result.

    In respect to Zooniverse, This issue has sat dormant for 3 weeks. 3 Weeks? Is nobody at the helm here? Let me reintegrate, lack of communication=failure to perform. Get the sponsors to live up to their obligations to you and/or us, be they expressed or implied, or terminate the project.

    Posted

  • nicro46 by nicro46

    I, agree, completely

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian

    Please be informed, that there had been a kickstarter campaign by "Planetary Resources" for a publicly accessible space telescope (ARKYD).:
    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arkydforeveryone/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/description
    Please read the Comments.:
    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arkydforeveryone/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/comments
    Some persons, who had donated money, are also frustrated!

    Wikipedia article about Asteroid Zoo.:

    It was created along with the ARKYD project through Kickstarter, funded with just over 1.5 million dollars.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Zoo

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian in response to stevef602's comment.

    Given the thousands of hours thus far wasted one the endeavor, I might suggest the data so far collected be given to the University of Arizona. The grad students there may be able to refine the constraints their Gaussian functions to get a usable algorithm. Catalina itself may be interested in the data.

    Please be informed about following announcement on the webpage of Planetary Resources a year ago.:

    NASA and Planetary Resources, Inc. Announce Results of the Asteroid Data Hunter Challenge
    http://www.planetaryresources.com/2015/03/nasa-and-planetary-resources-announce-results-of-the-asteroid-data-hunter-challenge/

    The source code of the winning algorithm is available at github.:
    https://github.com/PlanetaryResources/NTL-Asteroid-Data-Hunter

    So maybe that algorithm could be improved by using Asteroid Zoo classifications!
    In my opinion, Asteroid Zoo should have been started after having the results of the Asteroid Data Hunter Challenge! I think, that the Zooniverse shouldn't have allowed Planetary Resources to start Asteroid Zoo before having the results of the contest!
    The contest had been announced two years ago!
    The new algorithm is available for one year! So the Asteroid Zoo project should have been reviewed a year ago IMHO!

    Posted

  • MvGulik by MvGulik

    Funny you should bring up "Asteroid Data Hunter", just recycled a topic on it (well, a question topic that it.). "Asteroid Data Hunter" looked interesting. But I could not try it as I did not have a system capable of running it (still don't).

    Posted