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Science

Comet Hunting For The Masses 118

Posted by chrisd from the scientific-progress-via-idle-hands dept.
khendron writes "In this article in Wired the most awesome past time is described. Comet Hunting. On you computer. No more cold nights outside with the telescope. Sit back with a cola, fire up the broadband, and start looking." From the article: "Amateurs looking at the SOHO images on the Web have found 76 percent of the 428 new comets that have turned up in SOHO images. Of the 31 people who have discovered comets, 21 of them are amateurs. They come from 10 different countries, including Australia, Great Britain, Germany and China. "
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Comet Hunting For The Masses More

Comet Hunting For The Masses

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  • Distributed Computing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clambert ( 519009 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:00AM (#3475805) Homepage
    I wonder how long it'll be before we see distributed "Search For Comets" apps start popping up...

  • Wooosh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:01AM (#3475807)
    Cool. We can get recognition for looking at computer screens, at last!

  • Does NASA need help to identify Planet killers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by davor_p ( 98394 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:02AM (#3475810)
    Could NASA use similar approach to identify objects on collision course with Earth...
    Sort of like: "Neighbourgh's watch for our own beloved planet"...

    Don't take this seriously - or do... ;-)

  • Geeks (Score:5, Funny)

    by jchawk ( 127686 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:03AM (#3475813) Homepage Journal
    If there was a geek olympics would this be a medal sport?

  • Comet hunting. I really want to do this. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Things To Do Tuesday ( 577819 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:12AM (#3475833) Journal
    Now, I have things to do Tuesday.

    1. Hunt comets
    2. Flee nerd-hunters

  • ELE? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:14AM (#3475835)
    What happens if you are the one to find ELE (Extinction Level Event)? Are you a hero? For how long? And the Most Important Question: Do you tell anyone else?

    • Re:ELE? (Score:3, Funny)

      by DanThe1Man ( 46872 )
      Of course you tell people, espesically the government. How else are they going to assemble the 10,000 best citizens and find all that Ensure nutrition drink? [imdb.com]

    • Re:ELE? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by joonasl ( 527630 )
      The people who find the comets probably do not calculate their orbital elements (atleast to the needed accuracy) to determine weather the comet is on a collision path or not. To determine the orbit one needs several observations spanning over a fairly long period of time. Therefore even though you might find a ELE, you most probably would not know about it..
      • Yes, this is further complicated by the fact that these comets are close to the extrema of their orbits. This is where you'll get the highest error since slight changes in its path (or error computing its path due to pixelation, etc) can have an enormous effect on where it may end up on the flip side.
    • ...do you name it after yourself?
    • Just tell me.
    • Of course you tell someone. Look up Bruce Willis' phone number, and let him know. If you can't get ahold of him, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler can probably help you locate him. Then, Bruce Willis will gather up his friends, and fly around the moon at mach 12 and blow up the ELE right before it hits earth.

    • ob.book :

      _Lucifer's_Hammer_ Niven

      one of the best in the genre
      a perfect beach novel, too.
    • Yes, and at 15 you also get to get married. It's like a geek's dream come true :)
  • No, the article isn't down. I just figure that in the next few hours we'll have found more comets than the ort cloud could ever hope to serve.

  • 15 minutes of fame (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anarchofascist ( 4820 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:35AM (#3475878) Homepage Journal
    Sure, you get your fifteen minutes of fame, but it's only 15 minutes. All these comets are either sungrazers or sundivers.

    "Nearly all the comets they find are tiny shards of rock and ice, doomed to evaporate in the sun's atmosphere days after they are spotted. "

    It's not like any of these people can point up in the sky in fifty years time and say "Look Jimmy, you see that fuzzy patch of light in the sky that is about to destroy civilisation? Well I discovered it! That's Anarchofascist-Limo-Taco-9...

    • Re:15 minutes of fame (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hi,

      I wrote the article. you're almost right about never being able to see the comets again. about 10 percent of the comets found in SOHO images do not appear to be on a collision course with the sun. So there is a chance they'll make it around again. Unfortunately, the short format at Wired forced me to leave out a lot of details like that. For example, most of what is being spotted are known as Kreutz comets, which are the shards of a huge comet (perhaps 100 miles across) that disintegrated sometime in the relatively recent past (less than 20,000 years). They are all coming in on the same trajectory.

      regards,
      jeff benner
      • I wrote the article. you're almost right about never being able to see the comets again. about 10 percent of the comets found in SOHO images do not appear to be on a collision course with the sun. So there is a chance they'll make it around again.

        Thanks for the informed reply! I guess I should have done my research a little better.

        I do have a question however: Can we predict the orbits of the 10% of comets that SOHO finds but the sun doesn't eat?

        I would guess that many of these close-encounter small objects would evaporate so much that they would soon become invisible, and the unknown amount of acceleration due to the solar wind at perihelion would make their orbits hard to predict.

        If a dark comet heading out from the direction of the sun did collide with the Earth, I'm guessing the chances of a web-astronomer predicting the collision are still very low.
  • Do you really want to risk having your name on the comet that wipes out New York state? It's enough to give the paranoid pause for thought...
  • To run you own cult!

    Since our friendly neighborhood Heaven's Gate [wave.net] folk obviously got the wrong comet, it comes as a comfort the masses will have an easier time detecting these marvellous rocks.

  • nah... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Em Emalb ( 452530 ) <ememalb@gm a i l . com> on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @03:50AM (#3475907) Homepage Journal
    Call me troll, but...

    People, part of the fun of "looking for comets, etc." is actually getting off your butt, going outside with your SO, friend, family, what-have-you, and doing it together. Now this is cool, if you would rather spend *EVEN MORE* time sitting on your ass behind your computer. No thanks, I'll grab my telescope and head outside to do this, like I have in the past.

    Summary:

    crank up your machine, get it running, and then go look outside for yourself.

    *Disclaimer: I am at work, it's 4:45am, I'm cranky and there is no reason for me to be here, but I have to be.
    -1 troll

    • Re:nah... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hoofie ( 201045 )
      One of the benefits of using computers nowadays is that amateurs can trawl through data and look for things that professionals don't have time to do. Okay, looking for very short-lived comets may not be the most thrilling part of it, but its a welcome adjunct to the increasing co-operation between amateur and professional astronomers.

      An example of this is the British Supernova Hunt [britastro.org], where amateur astronomers (albeit with high-quality equipment) scan the skies for novae, image them and report back the findings, all of which lead to a better understanding of the universe. Professional telescope time is scarce and very expensive, so amateurs can do this time-consuming and laborious work, freeing up the professionals for more exacting science.

      There are very few fields where amateurs can feel they contribute something to our understanding - Astronomy is one area where this is possible.
    • Amen, brother. If you want to spend time watching rocks who are slowly turning around, go play in the garden with your little brother, or somebody else's little brother, for all I care. All you need is some reasonable sized stones, some red paint to mark a bullet on your head, and there you go.

  • What about automating this ?? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward


    With image recognition, spectrum detection in an embedded system, which can tell that there is possible comet :) automate whatever you can !


  • SOHO Sales Pitch (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <<ten.elcychtneves> <ta> <kram>> on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @04:56AM (#3475996) Homepage
    Telecommute to work and never leave the house? Have your groceries delivered to you because you're worried you'll miss a First Post? Have your DVD's mailed to you because you don't want to go outside? Meet women off the internet because you don't want to go to bars, or anywhere else for that matter?

    You, like many of the other slashdotters who browse this site may be interested in Astronomy. But alas, Astronomy is one of those "evil" practices where often one must go outside, or even to a planetarium to witness the night sky.

    No such need anymore! New and Improved SOHO gives you all the luxury of another nerdy hobby without ever having to leave the house! Just browse the pages, and you too can feel that you're at one with the night sky! Without even having to take your eyes off the computer screen!

    Ever worry that you'll lose your lovely monitor tan if you go outside and do anything! Not to worry! SOHO's experience fits in a browser window, along with your threads of GIMPS, SETI@Home, and ProgressQuest to boot! Contribute to 3 1/4 worthy causes at the same time!

    But wait, there's more! If you visit our Site, we will give you a nifty "I find comets while surfing slashdot" T-Shirt! This does well with the ladies when talking to them over the webcam.

    Act now! Web site is limited as this site is bound to be slashdotted soon.

    Visit today! Before that comet with your name on it becomes "Comet AnonCoward-23832"

    • "Meet women off the internet because you don't want to go to bars, or anywhere else for that matter?" Ofcouz' ! Nowhere it's easier to meet women than in the net. Although those women are quite picky, since they got a lot from which to choose from. Also you should "date" only trough IRC, EMail, ICQ, whatever for few years, then get married and move together. This way you have to go outside your house even less! Doesn't future sound like bliss.. No wait! This is how I live NOW! I'm living my dream! Hallelujah!
  • ...the most awesome past time is described...
    What past time? The Renaissance? The Enlightenment? The swingin' 20s?

    Oh. You meant pastime! Now all is clear.

  • OnMyGod! (Score:2, Funny)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 )
    There's a comet hunting for the masses? Run! Hide!

  • Comet Hunter (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GdoL ( 460833 )
    Last night I saw a movie when a comet shower was the most important thing in a family life. The simple fact that you are with your love ones or friends on the outside looking to the stars and seeing that great show is great.

    The feling that you are a tiny point in the universe is most significantly achieved if you are at night looking to the sky.

    • Re:Comet Hunter (Score:3, Funny)

      by frog51 ( 51816 )
      What's a comet shower? I've seen meteor showers, and I've seen comets but I don't think I know this one.

      Cool concept though - like 40 comets in a pack (or herd, or school maybe) orbiting together.
      • That was a very small meteor hitting my head on the moment I wrote those lines. That was a meteor shower of course.

        Oh no, another one.......

  • Boy, is that evil or what? (Score:4, Funny)

    by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @06:19AM (#3476118)
    At least my initial thought when I read the headline "Comet Hunting For The Masses" was that some kind of
    comet is out there searching for masses of people to kill. Gives a whole new meaning to "Armageddon", I guess I understand all the drama in that movie now.

  • Amateurs do a lot of the ground work anyway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @06:59AM (#3476207) Journal

    Amateurs looking at the SOHO images on the Web have found 76 percent of the 428 new comets that have turned up in SOHO images.

    This is hardly unusual. When it comes down to it, amateurs do more than 76 percent of virtually everything practical in astronomy already. Professionals frequently work with amateurs to get and confirm results, and a lot of professional astronomers also do things as amateurs (for fun) when they're not working. Then amateurs keep up with the professional findings, and everyone gets something out of it.

    Astronomy is probably one of the only sciences left where amateur hobbyists can and do still contribute so much useful effort towards it.

    There's just not enough funding for astronomy and space science to do anywhere near everything that can be done. For example, to get time on any big telescope, a professional has to write up a massive report and convince a board that it's worth researching what they want to do. They often have to book it many months or years in advance for possibly one or two nights of viewing. If there are circumstances like bad weather, it's often just treated as bad luck.

    That's about the state of professional astronomy. The resources are so limited that there's a massive reliance on data submitted by and work done by amateurs. Professionals can't watch all the sky all the time. Lots of supernovae, comets and asteroids in the past have been discovered by amateurs from their back yard, reported, and confirmed by professionals before (sometimes) being studied further.

    I don't know why you'd want to sit in front of a computer studying photographs all the time when you can go out with a telescope. It's so much more fun and rewarding to be actually doing something, and you actually meet people when you get involved, which is more than most people get from sitting in front of a computer. But I probably feel that way because I'm an amateur astronomer.

  • No more cold nights outside with the telescope.

    The funnest part of astronomy is spending a cold night outside with the telescope. Sure, playing with computers is fun, but not nearly as fun as playing outdoors. I may spend 50 hours a week coding, but I spend as much of the other 118 hours as possible outside - hiking, canoeing, stargazing, etc. Try it, you might like it.

  • Is it something like a pastime ?

  • Ok, Apparently few of you actually tried to find a real comet at a real telescope freezing your but outside. Real hunting has the following problems: - Poor weather (especially in the North East) means that you can't observer frequently enough to have good odds of being the first one to see something because you will be clouded out far too often. Truly serious comet hunters move to Arizona to have enought clear skys to have good odds. - Today most comets are found by professional searches http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/ with bigger scopes. That doesn't leave much left for amateurs -Min. req. these days for comet hunting is about a 20" or 22" obsession scope. Affordable for SillyValley stock holders but not for the masses out there http://www.globaldialog.com/~obsessiontscp/OBHP.ht ml

  • SOHO is democratization of comet hunting (Score:4, Informative)

    by scattol ( 577179 ) on Tuesday May 07, 2002 @08:20AM (#3476549)
    Ok, Apparently few of you actually tried to find a real comet at a real telescope freezing your but outside. Real hunting has the following problems:
    • Poor weather (especially in the North East) means that you can't observer frequently enough to have good odds of being the first one to see something because you will be clouded out far too often. Truly serious comet hunters [jarnac.org] move to Arizona to have enought clear skys to have good odds.
    • Today most comets are found by professional searches such as linear [mit.edu] with bigger scopes. That doesn't leave much left for amateurs
    • Equipement maybe affordable for SillyValley stock holders but not for the masses out there. Min. req. these days for comet hunting is about a 20" or 22" obsession scope. [globaldialog.com] That's the trend in recent amateur discovery such as comet Petriew [regina.rasc.ca]
    • to find stuff that faint you need to be several hours out of town to get a dark enough sky becuase you work in a big town to affoard all the equipement. Avoiding light pollution [darksky.org] is essential to see stuff that faint so you can't do it often enough

    So SOHO is actually a playing field leveler in that sense and makes comet discovery more accessible than before. Sure the is less glory that doing it the old fashion way. It's free, always good weather, timely data. It's also the only legitimate [iau.org] way to get your name in the heavens instead of buying [starregistry.com] stars which is nothing more than a scam IMHO. So, sure, it's sure a much bigger kick to find one at the eyepiece but a SOHO one still counts in my book.

    • Min. req. these days for comet hunting is about a 20" or 22" obsession scope.

      Until he died earlier this year, Yuji Hyakutake found comets with his 25x150 binoculars [skyandtelescope.com]. Even then though, usually it's rewarding just tracking down and finding these things that the professionals find. Having a big telescope doesn't hurt, but it's not absolutely necessary. What really helps is keen eyesight, a certain amount of patience and experience, and an extremely good knowledge of what the sky and background stars should look like in whatever region you're looking.

      Big telescopes aren't that much of a big thing, either. I know several people with 20"+ telescopes on homebuilt dobsonian mounts... and they are monster amateur telescopes, with the main significant expenses being the mirror and the time to build it. Apart from that it's just having somewhere to put it. I'm not suggesting that it's something for everyone, but it's hardly out of reach, either.

  • Is it just me or is this one of those famously misleading headlines (like you commonly find in newspapers)

    When I first read this i read it as Comet hunting for the masses--as in Comet is actively seeking out and attempting to run over (in a cosmic sort of way) 'the masses' whoever they might be.

    I got a good chuckle out of it for about 10seconds.

    Again this is pre-coffee, so that might explain it.
  • If you discover something, you can name it, right?

    What about comet Slashdot?
    or Microsoftsux
    or....
    or...
  • You mean I can use this connection to search for other things besides nude photos of britney spears?

  • SOHO, launched over six years ago as a project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, has discovered more than 420 comets in just under six years. This makes the spacecraft the most prolific comet finder in the history of astronomy. Most of the comets were first spotted by amateurs around the world who downloaded SOHO's real-time images to their home computers. Anyone with Internet access can take part in the hunt for new comets and be a comet discoverer.

    A new comet was discovered over the Internet by a Chinese amateur astronomer visiting the website for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The comet "C/2002 G3 (SOHO)" was first reported on Friday, April 12, by XingMing Zhou of BoLe city, in the XinJiang province of China, who discovered the comet while watching SOHO real-time images of the Sun on the Internet. The comet is a new comet, not belonging to any known group.

    "From September 2000 to now I have been trying to find SOHO comets, and I've discovered 13 comets, one of which, designated '2001U9' and initially cataloged by the SOHO project as 'SOHO-367,' was the brightest one in the last two years," said Zhou, who previously spent more than 1,600 hours since his 1985 graduation scanning the heavens with his 15cm F/5.3 reflector telescope to discover a single comet.

    "What's exciting about these near-sun comets is that we are exploring a population of comets that has never been seen before because they are very small and faint," said Douglas Biesecker, a solar physicist with L3 Com Analytics Corporation, Vienna, Va. "By the time their orbits take them close to the Sun so they become bright, they are lost in the Sun's glare and require a space-based coronagraph like that on SOHO to be seen." Biesecker, who is affiliated with the SOHO program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., confirms potential comet discoveries as they are posted to the SOHO website.

    C/2002 G3 (SOHO) will be visible in SOHO's Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) C3 images until Saturday, April 20. The comet was first visible late in the day on Thursday, April 11. It entered the field of view at the bottom edge, almost directly under the Sun. It is moving upward to the left, and will eventually move back toward the right, exiting from the LASCO C3 field of view at the top edge, to the right of the Sun. First cataloged by the SOHO project as "SOHO-422," it has been officially designated C/2002 G3 (SOHO) by the International Astronomical Union.

    The comet reached the point closest to the Sun in its orbit on April 17 at about 1:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, at a distance of about 7.6 million miles (12.3 million kilometers). As the week goes on, the comet will move through the field of view more quickly.

    In all these images, the shaded disk is a mask in the instrument that blots out direct sunlight, making faint comets and the dim outer atmosphere of the Sun, or the corona, visible. The white circle added within the disk shows the size and position of the visible Sun.

    Solar radiation heats the comet, which in turn causes the outgassing of its water molecules and dust. The dust scatters sunlight at visible wavelengths, making the comet bright in LASCO images. The water molecules break down into oxygen and hydrogen atoms, and the hydrogen atoms interact with the coronal plasma (electrified gas that comprises the extended atmosphere of the Sun).

    Story [nasa.gov] from NASA website. Modifications made.

  • Analog? Really? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Charlie Bill ( 34627 )
    With all the work being done in image recognition, nobody has come up with anything that does this for astronomy -- with the sheer volume of digital data currently available?
    • Amateurs for amateurs ... hunt comets. And this is our professional defense against the Doomsday?!

      - Thomas
    • I myself created a system that optically recognized a moving object in a series of pictures after substracting the known GSC objects. It was 7 years ago when i was 17 and was used with images from a 1m Schmidt camera.

      The problem was that since the software was made by an undergrad a few people took it seriously, but got great results. The system was made in pascal ...

      Right now it wouldn't take more than a week to build such a software, and even less time if you use something like scilab
  • It's unlikely that general comet hunting will be available to the masses, for a couple of reasons. 1) there's not much demand, without demand no-one is going to make it available. 2) While you can look at a video of the whole night sky, the only way you can really get to have a close look at something is with your own telescope, or to book some time on a remote telescope somewhere. - The former is very expensive, the latter is very difficult, you can't just ask, it takes a lot of time and effort to find a telescope willing to give you some time (Trust me, I've tried.) If you were to discover something, the best thing to do is to register it as quickly as possible, if you don't someone else is going to find it anyway, and then they'll get to name it.

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