Asteroids@home
Asteroids@home is a volunteer distributed computing project that needs your help to increase our asteroid knowledge.
Why asteroids?
Since asteroids are remnants from the early solar system, studying them can provide insights into our solar system. They contain information about the building blocks of planets and can help us understand how planets like Earth formed and evolved. Asteroids are diverse and offer a wide range of scientific and possibly economic opportunities. By studying their compositions, surface properties, and geology, scientists can learn more about the history and evolution of these small celestial bodies, as well as the broader processes that have shaped our solar system. Additionally, some asteroids have the potential to impact Earth, and understanding their orbits, compositions, and sizes is crucial for developing strategies to mitigate potential threats. By studying asteroids, scientists can identify and assess these impact hazards, and develop methods to deflect or mitigate threats.
With more than 500,000 discovered objects, asteroids form a large population of small bodies in the solar system that was affected by all processes acting during the formation and evolution of the solar system.[1] By studying asteroids, we can reveal the history and current state of our cosmic neighborhood.
History
Asteroids@home was first presented to the scientific community at the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting in 2012, when project director Josef Ďurech and collaborators described the new volunteer computing framework being built to tackle the computationally intensive problem of asteroid shape reconstruction from sparse photometry.[2] The project officially launched in February 2013[3] and has been active ever since.
The project was created at the Astronomical Institute, Charles University in Prague, in cooperation with Radim Vančo from CzechNationalTeam. It is directed by Josef Ďurech, an astronomer at Charles University specialising in asteroid photometry and shape modelling, with over 200 published papers and thousands of citations.[4] Georgi Vidinski serves as the project's software developer.
As of recent statistics, Asteroids@home has attracted over 163,000 registered users, of whom roughly 11,500 have earned computing credit.[5]
Goal
Asteroids@home is establishing the physical properties of asteroids in our solar system, publishing the results in peer-reviewed journals and making them publicly available in the DAMIT database.
The "Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques" (DAMIT) was created with the aim of providing the astronomical community access to reliable and up-to-date physical models of asteroids — i.e., their shapes, rotation periods, and spin axis directions.[6] For each asteroid, DAMIT provides the polyhedral shape model, the sidereal rotation period, the spin axis direction, and the photometric data used for the inversion. The database is updated whenever new models are available or when already published models are refined. Models from DAMIT can be used for further detailed studies of individual objects, as well as for statistical studies of the whole population. As of recent counts, DAMIT hosts over 16,000 asteroid models.[7]
There are almost a million known asteroids — we know their orbit in the solar system (by measuring their position at different times) and their approximate size (by measuring their brightness and knowing their distance). To learn more about their physical properties, other observing techniques must be used. One of them is photometry — the measure of brightness variations caused by rotation. By this technique, rotation periods were derived for tens of thousands of asteroids.
Methods
With a huge amount of photometric data coming from big all-sky surveys as well as from backyard astronomers, asteroid Light curve inversion modeling becomes viable — though it generally has been far too compute intensive for use at scale.
Light curve inversion is a mathematical technique used to model the surfaces of rotating objects from their brightness variations. However, data from the surveys which serve as input data are often sparse in time, which means that the rotation period — the basic physical parameter — cannot be estimated from the data easily. Contrary to classical light curves where the period is "visible" in the data, a wide interval of all possible periods has to be scanned densely when analyzing sparse data.
The time needed to scan the period interval for a single asteroid with hundreds of measurements covering ten years or more is on the order of weeks at 1 CPU.[8] Multiplied across hundreds of thousands of known asteroids, this enormously enlarges the computational time, with the result that the only practical way to efficiently handle photometry of hundreds of thousands of asteroids is to use distributed computing.
How work units are distributed
The period parameter space for each asteroid is divided into hundreds of smaller intervals. These intervals are sent as individual work units (WUs) to volunteer computers, scanned separately, and then joined together on the project server to find the global best-fit solution.[8] This decomposition is what makes the problem ideally suited to distributed computing — each interval is independent and can be processed by any available volunteer machine.
A typical work unit takes roughly 30–90 minutes to complete on a modern CPU core, though run times vary with processor generation and clock speed.[9]
The Asteroids@home applications that are distributed by Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), employ photometric measurements of asteroids from observed data. The results are mathematical asteroid models with the direction of the spin axis and the rotation period. This is important data to document for asteroids in our solar system. Our future may depend on it.
Data sources
Asteroids@home has drawn on multiple large astronomical data sources over its lifetime:
- Lowell Photometric Database — The primary early data source, containing re-calibrated photometry reported to the Minor Planet Center for roughly 330,000 asteroids, with hundreds of brightness measurements per object spanning 1998–2011.[8] In the 2016 publication based on this data, the team processed data for the first ~100,000 numbered asteroids and derived new shape models.
- WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) — Thermal infrared data from NASA's WISE satellite was combined with Lowell optical photometry to produce additional asteroid models, published in 2018.[10]
- Gaia DR2 — ESA's Gaia satellite released photometry of approximately 14,000 asteroids in Data Release 2. Combined with Lowell data, the Asteroids@home framework applied light curve inversion to ~5,400 asteroids for which both datasets were available, yielding around 1,100 unique models, of which 762 were entirely new.[11]
- ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) — A sky survey primarily aimed at detecting potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids. Asteroids@home processed ATLAS photometry for roughly 100,000 asteroids observed between 2015 and 2018, yielding approximately 2,750 unique models, of which around 1,800 were previously unknown.[12] A follow-up study used ATLAS bootstrap samples to derive rotation periods for about 5,000 additional asteroids.[13]
As of the time of writing, the project is actively combining ATLAS and Gaia data together for joint inversion — the current computational task being distributed to volunteers.[13]
Future data sources anticipated to dramatically expand the project's output include the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (formerly LSST), which is expected to observe millions of asteroids over its decade-long survey.
Technical details
Platform
Asteroids@home runs on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) framework — the same open-source middleware that powers projects such as SETI@home, Einstein@home, and Folding@home. The BOINC server distributes work units, collects and validates results, and provides community tools including forums, a credits system, and a "User of the Day" acknowledgment feature.[1]
To participate, volunteers download and install the free BOINC client software, then attach to the project using the URL: https://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/
Supported platforms
Asteroids@home is one of the longer-running BOINC projects and supports a wide range of platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, and ARM-based systems (such as Raspberry Pi).[14] The project supports:
- CPU (all platforms) — the foundational compute pathway, with applications optimised for modern instruction sets.
- AVX512 — an optimised application released in December 2023 for CPUs supporting AVX512dq instructions on Linux and Windows 64-bit, developed with help from the ahorek team.[5]
- OpenCL / AMD GPU — a GPU application for AMD graphics cards released in September 2023, after considerable development effort.[5]
- NVIDIA GPU — GPU support for NVIDIA cards has also been developed over the project's lifetime.
Credit and validation
Like all BOINC projects, Asteroids@home uses a redundant validation scheme: the same work unit is sent to multiple volunteers, and results are cross-checked before being accepted. This guards against hardware errors or intentional manipulation. Volunteers earn BOINC credit proportional to the computing time contributed, which is tracked on the project leaderboard and on third-party statistics sites. Asteroids@home also credits individual crunchers whose computations contribute to published discoveries.[15]
Asteroids@home is also one of the projects whitelisted by Gridcoin, a cryptocurrency that rewards BOINC volunteer computing contributions.
Project team / Sponsors
Asteroids@home is based at the Astronomical Institute, Charles University in Prague in cooperation with Radim Vančo from CzechNationalTeam. Georgi Vidinski is the software developer. The project is directed by Josef Ďurech.
Josef Ďurech (born 21 September 1974, Pardubice, Czech Republic) has been associated with the Astronomical Institute of Charles University since 2004. With over 200 published research papers and thousands of academic citations, he is one of the leading experts globally in asteroid lightcurve inversion and shape modelling.[4][16] Beyond Asteroids@home, Ďurech has collaborated on studies involving spacecraft targets such as asteroid (65803) Didymos — the target of NASA's DART planetary defence mission — and participated in citizen science collaborations to model near-Earth asteroids using amateur telescope networks.
The work has been financially supported by grants from the Czech Science Foundation (grant 15-04816S and 18-04514J, among others).[1][17]
Scientific results
https://asteroidsathome.net/scientific_results.html
The project has produced a substantial and growing body of asteroid shape models, spin states, and rotation periods. Key highlights include:
- Processing photometric data for over 100,000 asteroids from the Lowell database alone as of the 2015 publication.[8]
- Deriving approximately 2,750 new or confirmed shape models from ATLAS photometry (2020).[18]
- Deriving rotation periods for approximately 5,000 asteroids from ATLAS bootstrap analysis (2022).[19]
- Producing statistical studies on the distribution of spin-axis longitudes and shape elongations in the main asteroid belt, revealing population-level patterns relevant to understanding how collisions and radiation forces have shaped the belt over billions of years.[20]
All reliable results are published in peer-reviewed journals and deposited in the public DAMIT database, ensuring the scientific community has open access to the models.
How to join
Joining Asteroids@home requires only a computer and an internet connection:
- Download and install the free BOINC client software, available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.
- Attach to the project by entering the URL:
https://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/when prompted, or search for "Asteroids@home" within the BOINC client's project list. - Let it run — BOINC will automatically download work units, compute them in the background when your computer is idle, and upload results.
Volunteers can also manage multiple BOINC projects simultaneously using a BOINC Account Manager (such as BAM! at boincstats.com), which makes it easy to balance resource sharing across several science projects.
Scientific publications
- Durech, Josef, J. Hanus, R. Vanco, D. Oszkiewicz and E. Bowell. New Asteroid Shape Models Derived from the Lowell Photometric Database. (2013).
- Durech, J., B. Carry, M. Delbo, M. Kaasalainen and M. Viikinkoski. Asteroid Models from Multiple Data Sources. (2015). DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.1502.04816.
- Ďurech, J., J. Hanuš and R. Vančo. Asteroids@home—A BOINC distributed computing project for asteroid shape reconstruction Astronomy and Computing (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.ascom.2015.09.004.
- Cibulková, H., J. Ďurech, D. Vokrouhlický, M. Kaasalainen and D. A. Oszkiewicz. Distribution of spin-axes longitudes and shape elongations of main-belt asteroids. Astronomy & Astrophysics (2016). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201629192.
- Durech, J., J. Hanus, D. Oszkiewicz and R. Vanco. Asteroid models from the Lowell Photometric Database. (2016). DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.1601.02909.
- Hanuš, J., J. Ďurech, D. A. Oszkiewicz et al. New and updated convex shape models of asteroids based on optical data from a large collaboration network. Astronomy & Astrophysics (2016). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201527441.
- Durech, Josef, Josef Hanus and Victor Ali-Lagoa. Asteroid models reconstructed from the Lowell Photometric Database and WISE data. (2018). DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.1807.02083.
- Durech, Josef, Josef Hanus and Radim Vanco. Inversion of asteroid photometry from Gaia DR2 and the Lowell Observatory photometric database. (2019). DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.1909.09395.
- Durech, J., J. Tonry, N. Erasmus, L. Denneau, A. N. Heinze, H. Flewelling and R. Vanco. Asteroid models reconstructed from ATLAS photometry. (2020). DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2010.01820.
- Ďurech, Josef, Michael Vávra, Radim Vančo and Nicolas Erasmus. Rotation Periods of Asteroids Determined With Bootstrap Convex Inversion From ATLAS Photometry. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2022.809771.
External links
- Asteroids@home — Official project page
- DAMIT database — browse asteroid models
- BOINC — Download the client software
- Asteroids@home — Scientific results
- Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) — Wikipedia
- Asteroid — Wikipedia
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Ďurech, J., J. Hanuš and R. Vančo. Asteroids@home—A BOINC distributed computing project for asteroid shape reconstruction. Astronomy and Computing (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.ascom.2015.09.004.
- ↑ Durech et al. Asteroids@Home. Presented at DPS 2012.
- ↑ Asteroids@home — Wikidata entry, citing project start time as February 2013.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Josef Ďurech — World Biographical Encyclopedia.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Asteroids@home project statistics — Gridcoinstats.
- ↑ Ďurech, J. et al. DAMIT: a database of asteroid models. Astronomy & Astrophysics (2010).
- ↑ Asteroid shape inversion with light curves using deep learning (2025), referencing DAMIT's model count.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Ďurech, J. et al. Asteroids@home — A BOINC distributed computing project for asteroid shape reconstruction. arXiv:1511.08640 (2015).
- ↑ AnandTech community discussion of Asteroids@home work unit runtimes (2013).
- ↑ Durech, Josef, Josef Hanus and Victor Ali-Lagoa. Asteroid models reconstructed from the Lowell Photometric Database and WISE data. (2018).
- ↑ Durech, Josef, Josef Hanus and Radim Vanco. Inversion of asteroid photometry from Gaia DR2 and the Lowell Observatory photometric database. (2019).
- ↑ Durech, J. et al. Asteroid models reconstructed from ATLAS photometry. (2020).
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Asteroids@home official project page — news announcement.
- ↑ Koshura, V. Perspective platforms for BOINC distributed computing network. CEUR Workshop Proceedings.
- ↑ BOINC4Science project list — Asteroids@home entry.
- ↑ Josef Ďurech — ResearchGate profile.
- ↑ Durech, J. et al. Asteroid models reconstructed from ATLAS photometry. A&A (2020). Acknowledgements section.
- ↑ Durech, J. et al. Asteroid models reconstructed from ATLAS photometry. (2020).
- ↑ Ďurech, Josef, Michael Vávra, Radim Vančo and Nicolas Erasmus. Rotation Periods of Asteroids Determined With Bootstrap Convex Inversion From ATLAS Photometry. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences (2022).
- ↑ Cibulková, H. et al. Distribution of spin-axes longitudes and shape elongations of main-belt asteroids. A&A (2016).