FAQ
In this section you will find a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs). This page will be updated as we get more questions and as the project evolves. If you have any questions not answered here, you can reach out to the Science Team through the Talk tab on Zooniverse or through our email at hyperactiveasteroids@gmail.com.
What exactly is activity?
In solar system astronomy and planetary science, activity is a broad term that describes material, like dust and gas, leaving the body of a comet, asteroid, or Centaur.
What are volatiles?
In astronomy and planetary science, the term volatile usually refers to a substance that is liquid or gas at room temperature on Earth, such as water or CO2. In space, these substances usually sublimate, changing from solid to gas and skipping the liquid phase, similar to dry ice on Earth.
How do you get the pictures?
The team developed a comprehensive pipeline to extract the thumbnail images for this project. The process begins by examining the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam public data archive to see what data is available. We then determine which objects may be in those images. We download individual images and perform a series of checks to make sure the object is really in the thumbnail and that it can actually be seen. We assess the overall content of our image repository, copy the desired thumbnails to a cloud storage service, and upload the thumbnails to Zooniverse for classification.
Where do these pictures come from?
See also "How do you get the pictures?" above. The images come from the Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument on the Subaru 8.2-meter telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, located at the Maunakea Observatory in Hawai’i.
What's the difference between an active asteroid and a main belt comet?
You may hear these terms used interchangeably, but strictly speaking main belt comets (MBCs) are a subset of active asteroids. MBCs orbit only within the main asteroid belt that is found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. MBCs also typically display recurring episodes of activity when approaching the Sun.
How do you know activity in an image is real?
This question is asking how we can tell if the activity in question is really coming from the object, and not an image artifact or some background object such as a galaxy. To evaluate potential activity we first consider how many images of the activity we have. If we only have one image of the activity, we may extract a "comparison field" that shows exactly the same field of view but at a different time. If the "activity" is still there but the asteroid is not, then the "activity" is actually something else, such as a background galaxy. Hopefully we have multiple images of the object being active. No matter what images we have, in the case of a new active object discovery we would carry out a follow-up observing campaign to study the object and confirm activity.
What will you do with the classifications?
We will carry out a follow-up observing campaign of newfound active objects in order to confirm activity and to study the object in more detail. Classifications may also be used to train machine learning systems and inform future ground- and space-based observatories about various aspects of finding and observing active objects.
Where is the research being conducted?
The research is being conducted at Northern Arizona University, the University of Washington, the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), Apache Point Observatory, the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT), and the Magellan Baade and Clay telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory (LCO).
What kind of resources are necessary for this project?
In addition to telescope facilities (see "Where is the research being conducted?"), this project makes use of Monsoon, the Northern Arizona University high-performance computing cluster. Monsoon is a capacity-type, Linux-based computer cluster with 4048 cores, 26TB of memory, and 28 NVIDIA GPUs: V100, A100, H200, P100, and RTX 6000. Cluster nodes have access to 2.3PB of shared storage of type scratch (lustre) and long-term project space (ZFS). Monsoon has a measured peak CPU performance of 224 teraflops. The project pipeline can use up to 500 CPUs, 32 Tb of RAM, 100 Tb of local storage and 50 Tb of cloud storage.
How is this project supported?
This work is supported in part by NASA grants 80NSSC25K7018 and 80NSSC24K1323 and NSF grant 2408827.