Sandra Steele, Educational Consultant

HSU Hosts International Asteroid Search
Hardin Simmons University

Working with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (UC Berkeley), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO; Blanco, Chile), and the Las Cumbres Observatory (Santa Barbara, CA), Hardin-Simmons University is the site of a pilot program in the search for new asteroids, the large boulders of rock that orbit the Sun at an average distance of 300 million miles, three times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Five high schools are participating in this 30-day pilot program (October 1-30, 2006). Four are located in the United States and the fifth is in Poland. The physics classes from these schools will access HSU Blackboard, where astronomical images from CTIO have been prepared and placed into folders. After their analysis, the results will be returned to HSU where follow up images will be coordinated with the Las Cumbres Observatory.

Using the professional data and facilities, it is estimated that each of the participating high schools will easily discover at least one new asteroid, which will be announced and catalogued by the Minor Planet Center (Harvard). Depending on the amount of time participating high schools devote to the program, as many as five to ten new asteroids could be discovered by each school.

In charge of the program is Mr. Patrick Miller, associate professor of mathematics in the Holland School of Sciences and Mathematics, and HSU Honors Program student Jeff Davis, son of Dr. Ken Davis, associate professor of mathematics. Davis will manage the image processing and the follow up image requests, as required by the Minor Planet Center for the official recognition of a discovery.

Davis was among HSU students who went to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory during May term 2006. The students were enrolled in Miller’s field course, PHSC 3099 “Topics in Planetary Science.” Jeff learned how to process images and search for asteroids. On his own, he returned to the Lab in July 2006 where he continued his studies, and began preparing for this international pilot program.

The goal of the 30-day pilot program is to have an ongoing program for high schools and colleges through which schools can integrate the program into their physics and astronomy labs.

Even more ambitious is an October 2007 initiative to conduct an HSU-based program that will search for large ice boulders located 4 billion miles from the Sun, 40 times as far as Earth is from the Sun. A third phase, scheduled for March 2008, is a program to find exploding stars (supernovae) in distant galaxies, millions of light years from Earth. Again, these discoveries will be original with the participating schools receiving recognized, published credit by the Minor Planet Center and the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Davis will present the results of the October 2006 pilot program in papers at two professional meetings, Lunar & Planetary Science Conference (NASA JSC; March 2007) and Hands-On Universe Conference (Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago; June 2007).