BHC students, staff identify 10 new asteroids
Kristin McKenzie
Issue date: 9/24/07 Section: News
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Ervin Caldwell, Brookhaven College student, was a participant in the International Asteroid Search Campaign at Brookhaven and is now a co-finder of two asteroids and a comet.
He said asteroids are commonly known as planetoids, or minor planets that have broken off. He said there are many between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, 300-600 million kilometers away from the sun, in what is called the Main Belt.
Caldwell said some of these asteroids get redirected towards Earth because of the sun, gravity from other planets or asteroid collision. Once they redirect, they become Near-Earth Objects and become a collision threat to Earth.
Most of the asteroids that do redirect often disintegrate in the atmosphere, but there are a few that regularly share Earth's orbit.
Brookhaven was one of 14 schools chosen to participate in the IASC in spring 2007. It is a program with software provided by Astrometrica in Austria to schools at no cost by the Astronomical Research Institute.
The software provides spreadsheets of images for students to analyze and decide if they think it is a potential asteroid.
The images are normally a set of three photographs of the same piece of sky in 30-minute intervals. The students can flash the images (called "blinking") to see if there are any moving unidentified objects.
Caldwell said he decided to take an astronomy class and to participate in the IASC for his class project. The project was run for 30 days during February-March 2007.
He said the overall results for the IASC during that project were 23 original discoveries in the Main Belt. Ten of those were credited to Brookhaven, as well as Caldwell, Anahita Sidhwa, his astronomy professor, and Charles Hafey, lab coordinator.
Caldwell said the most interesting part of the class was the research behind asteroids and the lack of concern from the science community. He said the hardest part for him was manually tracking and finding what the computer didn't.
"It was a challenge but I did enjoy it," Caldwell said. "It's good to know humans are not obsolete."
After finding what he thought was an asteroid, Caldwell then sent his information to Jeff Davis at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene.
Davis then sent it to the Minor Planet Center to be confirmed.
Caldwell said he wanted to partake in the project for fear of regret if he did not.
Some people argue that Earth is long overdue for an asteroid impact, because the last impact was in 1908, in Tunguska, Siberia.
"It's good to know what's in our neighborhood," Caldwell said. "The sooner people are aware of one, the faster they can react or find a solution."
Caldwell said if he could help save the world one day he would be proud.
He said asteroids are commonly known as planetoids, or minor planets that have broken off. He said there are many between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, 300-600 million kilometers away from the sun, in what is called the Main Belt.
Caldwell said some of these asteroids get redirected towards Earth because of the sun, gravity from other planets or asteroid collision. Once they redirect, they become Near-Earth Objects and become a collision threat to Earth.
Most of the asteroids that do redirect often disintegrate in the atmosphere, but there are a few that regularly share Earth's orbit.
Brookhaven was one of 14 schools chosen to participate in the IASC in spring 2007. It is a program with software provided by Astrometrica in Austria to schools at no cost by the Astronomical Research Institute.
The software provides spreadsheets of images for students to analyze and decide if they think it is a potential asteroid.
The images are normally a set of three photographs of the same piece of sky in 30-minute intervals. The students can flash the images (called "blinking") to see if there are any moving unidentified objects.
Caldwell said he decided to take an astronomy class and to participate in the IASC for his class project. The project was run for 30 days during February-March 2007.
He said the overall results for the IASC during that project were 23 original discoveries in the Main Belt. Ten of those were credited to Brookhaven, as well as Caldwell, Anahita Sidhwa, his astronomy professor, and Charles Hafey, lab coordinator.
Caldwell said the most interesting part of the class was the research behind asteroids and the lack of concern from the science community. He said the hardest part for him was manually tracking and finding what the computer didn't.
"It was a challenge but I did enjoy it," Caldwell said. "It's good to know humans are not obsolete."
After finding what he thought was an asteroid, Caldwell then sent his information to Jeff Davis at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene.
Davis then sent it to the Minor Planet Center to be confirmed.
Caldwell said he wanted to partake in the project for fear of regret if he did not.
Some people argue that Earth is long overdue for an asteroid impact, because the last impact was in 1908, in Tunguska, Siberia.
"It's good to know what's in our neighborhood," Caldwell said. "The sooner people are aware of one, the faster they can react or find a solution."
Caldwell said if he could help save the world one day he would be proud.
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