Near-Earth Asteroid Discovered Via Crowdsourcing 21
astroengine writes "The ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program has scored its first hit. Although SSA astronomers have detected asteroids before, this is the first time that a near-Earth object (NEO) has been spotted by the group of volunteers who analyze automated data from the 1-meter ESA Optical Ground Station telescope on Tenerife. Although details are scant, asteroid 2011 SF108's orbit takes it to a closest approach of 30 million kilometers (19 million miles, or roughly 100 times the average Earth-moon distance) from Earth — a distance considered 'safe.'"
that's (Score:1)
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no moon!
"I'm your moon, your my moon, we go round and round in circles"
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They way it went down (Score:2, Funny)
Poster one, "Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out"
Poster two, "That's odd. I just found one 900 miles out"
Poster three, "That's cool, the one I just spotted is 800 miles but I can't tell what direction it's headed in?'
Poster four, "You're all wrong it's 500 miles out and stationary. I'd guess it's 50 miles across. Wait I looked again, it's still fixed in the sky but I was wrong it's 75 miles across, er maybe a 100"
Poster five, "I've got you all beat we're having an unscheduled eclipse!"
Poster six, "That's noth
Re:They way it went down (Score:5, Funny)
Poster one, "Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out"........
I wonder if they had moderation?
Poster one, "Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out" +1 Interesting
Poster two, "That's odd. I just found one 900 miles out" +1 Interesting
Poster three, "That's cool, the one I just spotted is 800 miles but I can't tell what direction it's headed in?' +1 Interesting
Poster four, "You're all wrong it's 500 miles out and stationary. I'd guess it's 50 miles across. Wait I looked again, it's still fixed in the sky but I was wrong it's 75 miles across, er maybe a 100" +1 Funny
Poster five, "I've got you all beat we're having an unscheduled eclipse!" -1 Troll
Poster six, "That's nothing. There's two moons in the sky only one is really, really big. I wonder............." -1 Overrated
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Poster one, "Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out" +1 Interesting
"Hey I found NEO a 1,000 miles out" +1 Informative
Parent: +1 Insightful.
Old School Crowdsourcing (Score:2)
Up in the sky .. it's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's Superman!
old school joke (Score:2)
Up in the sky .. it's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's Superman!
*farting noise*........*splat*
(wiping face) Ewwwww ......no, it was a bird!
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I thought the third line was: "It's a frog!"
Probably dating myself...
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I think your ID does that job fairly well ;)
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You're right. Three is a crowd. This was six and two-thirds crowds. When will people learn.
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You're right. Three is a crowd.
Three's Company.
Automate (Score:2)
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The idea is that different humans will look at a data sets differently is what this is about. To automate that is nigh impossible.
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Wouldn't this be something that lends itself to automation more easily than crowd sourcing? Just asking...
Actually, the human eye is still beter at detecting trails on plates than automated systems are, especially where fainter trails are concerned. Automated system also have serious difficulty discerning between real NEA trails and trails from cosmic ray impacts on the sensor.
Spacewatch used automated detection, nevertheless human inspectors discivered 43 additional asteroid trails on the images between 2004 and 2006: trails that the automated routines missed.
NEO, you're the one... (Score:1)
Not a first: Spacewatch did this earlier (Score:3, Informative)