Asteroids@home
Asteroids@home is a volunteer distributed computing project that needs your help to derive the shape and spin and therefor increase our knowledge for a significant part of the asteroid population. The BOINC application employs photometric measurements of asteroids from observed data. The results are asteroid convex shape models with the direction of the spin axis and the rotation period. The models are published in peer-reviewed journals and then made public in the DAMIT database. Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques (DAMIT) is 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.
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. Light curve inversion is a mathematical technique used to model the surfaces of rotating objects from their brightness variations. However, data from surveys 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. This fact enormously enlarges the computational time and the only practical way to efficiently handle photometry of hundreds of thousands of asteroids is to use distributed computing. Moreover, the problem is ideal for parallelization - the period interval can be divided into smaller parts that are searched separately and then the results are joined together.[1]
Asteroids@home is based at Astronomical Institute, Charles University in Prague in cooperation with Radim Vančo from CzechNationalTeam. The project is directed by Josef Durech.
Asteroid basics
An asteroid is a small rocky body orbiting the sun. Large numbers of these, ranging in size from nearly 600 miles (1,000 km) across (Ceres) to dust particles, are found (as the asteroid belt ) especially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, though some have more eccentric orbits, and a few pass close to the earth or enter the atmosphere as meteors. Asteroids can be described as irregular solid bodies without any atmosphere or coma.
There are almost half 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 have to be used. One of them is photometry - the measure of brightness variations caused by rotation. By this technique, rotation periods were derived for several thousands of asteroids
Why
Big Bang! Everything explodes everywhere and gravity plays a critical role in the formation of structures in the universe. As matter clumps together under the influence of gravity, it leads to the formation of galaxies, stars, planets, and other astronomical objects. Within galaxies, planetary systems like our own form as a result of the condensation of material within protoplanetary disks. These disks of gas and dust around young stars gradually form planets and other small objects like comets and asteroids.
Since asteroids are remnants from the early solar system, studying them can provide insights into the processes that shaped our solar system's formation. 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. 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 impact hazards, and develop methods to deflect or mitigate threats.
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.