Help astronomers find new asteroids in the Hubble images

On the eve of June 30, which is considered the world“Asteroid Day”, the Minor Planet Center and NASA Aerospace Agency launched the Hubble Asteroid Hunter project, with which anyone can help astronomers find new asteroid tracks. Yes, even we are with you. According to the results of the study, scientists want to calculate the orbits of asteroids, as well as train neural networks to work effectively with photos sent by the Hubble telescope.

Over 28 years of work, Hubble sent thousands to Earthphotographs stored in the archives of the European Space Agency. And in 2017, the telescope reported the discovery of several asteroids, the distance to which is hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth. The telescope captured the tracks of the asteroids, and it turned out that only in one photo their number reaches 20 pieces.

To process this array of data, was runA new scientific project Hubble Asteroid Hunter based on the world's largest civil science portal Zooniverse. Everyone can take part in the search for tracks, it’s enough to register on the project website and study the search rules. You will be shown photos in which you will be asked to mark the tracks of the asteroids (if available). The images were selected in advance in such a way as to compare the observation times and the calculated orbits of the asteroids - thus, with high probability, you can find tracks of asteroids that were not known before this time.

Be prepared that the pictures will have to be as close as possible, and the vision must be very good. And without knowledge of the English language is not enough.

As soon as users process enoughthe number of images, the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union can build a model in order to more accurately predict the movement of asteroids. In the future, it is planned to train a neural network that can recognize such objects in images automatically. So far, scientists cannot do without human participation.

Most asteroids in the solar system are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scientists are aware of more than 700 thousand objects.

Launched in 1990 into orbit the telescope wasnamed after astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953). The device is equipped with a 2.4-meter mirror, as well as various instrumentation, which allows it to observe objects in the visible, infrared and ultraviolet spectral ranges.

See how the Hubble telescope showed 265,000 galaxies in one shot. Each can be considered in detail!

The telescope has been in operation for almost 30 years, and during that timehe repeatedly had problems. The latest breakdown became known on January 10, 2019 - this time Hubble broke the Wide Field Camera 3 wide-angle camera installed on the device in 2009.

Read on - Hubble telescope broke again, and at the wrong time

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