How To Discover An Asteroid
Would you like to discover an asteroid? Several students already have around the US. Just follow these simple step by step directions.
Open the Find Asteroids Web Tool
Enter some numbers into the fields and choose get images (a class can enter a different Camcol number for each student).
Right click your image and save it to your hard drive.
Open ImageJ and click file Open. Find the image you downloaded in step 3.
Next click Plug-Ins->FIND AND ASTEROID
If you see movement, you have found an asteroid. Why? Simple, the red, green and blue images which are combined in the final picture were taken at slightly different times. If you see movement between the red, green and blue frames, it is a near-earth object moving fairly fast. Want to find out why this works? Click here for a video on why moving objects are probably near us and click here for a video on how the cameras work.
If you want to practice, try the examples in the examples folder or use these from the survey site:
|
Run |
Camcol |
Field |
|
752 |
1 |
373 |
|
756 |
1 |
314 |
|
756 |
5 |
700 |
Download the FIND AN ASTEROID plug-in here.
You can participate in a search for Asteroids for older students. Click here to get more information.