Download Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project

Improving NEO Discovery Efficiency
With Citizen Science
Tim Axelrod
LSST EPO Scientist
[email protected]
October 1, 2013
T. Axelrod, NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge, Houston, Oct 1, 2013
LSST - Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
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Wide Fast Deep Optical Survey
8.4 M Primary Aperture
3.5 Degree Field Of View
3.2 Billion Pixel Camera
~40 Second Cadence
– Two 15 second exposures
– Full sky coverage every few nights
• Data Served and Archived
– Alerts of new events
– Catalogs of objects
– Images
• Education and Public Outreach
integral to the project
• Science Operations Start in 2022
LSST is a Different Kind of Telescope
• An integrated survey system. The Observatory,
Telescope, Camera and Data Management
system are all built to support the LSST survey.
There’s no PI mode, proposals, or time.
• Observe the database, simultaneous
investigations, data mining rather than classic
observing.
• The ultimate deliverable of LSST is not the
telescope, nor the instruments; it’s the fully
reduced data.
“LSST” is the database. The “Google Index” of the Optical Sky.
Citizen Science adds Value to LSST
understood data
all data
need human
intervention
cool mysteries
Credit: P. Gay/SIUE, S. Jacoby/LSST
understood data
How Can We Best Use Citizen
Scientists for Asteroid Detection?
• LSST will collect roughly 1.1 million asteroid
detections every night. I think this is too many for
CS’s to look at every one!
• Instead, let’s give them a higher level task: Assist
with track linkage
T. Axelrod, NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge, Houston, Oct 1, 2013
Citizen Science and Track Linking
• The computational complexity of track linking grows exponentially with
the number of asteroid detections in an image, and with the speed of
their motion (particularly a problem for NEOs)
– This is a major problem for LSST
• Current algorithms produce many candidate tracks whose correctness is
not assured
• Other information can be brought to bear under human control
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Real orbital dynamics
Knowledge of the Solar System population statistics
Light curves
Observations from other telescopes
• With the right sort of tools, I think it is practical for citizen scientists to
undertake this kind of analysis, and thereby greatly increase the efficiency
of the entire man/machine system for detecting and cataloging NEOs
T. Axelrod, NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge, Houston, Oct 1, 2013
Track Analysis Tools for Citizen Scientists
• There are parallels with another application area: Wide Area Motion
Imagery (WAMI)
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Tracking moving objects on the ground between images separated in space and time
Human input often required
Tools are under active development
We can learn from this community!
• Goal is to have several interacting tools, each providing its own
perspective on the likelihood that a track is correct
– Image examiner
– Lightcurve viewer
– Orbit fitter
• The role of the citizen scientist is to use these tools to draw a conclusion
about whether a candidate track is likely real or not
– Challenging, and fun!
T. Axelrod, NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge, Houston, Oct 1, 2013
Backup Slides
LSST will observe about 1.1 million asteroids every night