Ready for EURONEAR NEA surveys using the NEARBY moving source detection platform

Abstract In 2015 we started a PhD thesis aiming to write a moving objects processing system (MOPS) aimed to detect near Earth asteroids (NEAs) in astronomical surveys planned within the EURONEAR project. Based on this MOPS experience, in 2017 we proposed the NEARBY project to the Romanian Space Agency, which awarded funding to the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (UTCN) and the University of Craiovafor building a cloud-based online platform to reduce survey images, detect, validate and report in near real time asteroid detections and NEA candidates. The NEARBY platform was built and is available at UTCN since Feb 2018, being tested during 5 pilot surveys observed in 2017-2018 with the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma. Two NEAs were discovered in Nov 2018 (2018 VQ1 and 2018 VN3), being recovered and reported to MPC within 2 hours. Other 4 discovered NEAs were found from a few dozen possible NEA candidates promptly being followed, allowing us to discover 22 Hungarias and 7 Mars crossing asteroids using the NEARBY platform. Compared with other few available software, NEARBY could detect more asteroids (by 8-41 % ), but scores less than human detection (by about 10 % ). Using resulted data, the astrometric accurancy, photometric limits and an INT NEA survey case study are presented as guidelines for planning future surveys.

[1]  Dorian Gorgan,et al.  Automated prototype for asteroids detection , 2017, 2017 13th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP).

[2]  M. Birlan,et al.  EURONEAR: Data mining of asteroids and Near Earth Asteroids , 2009 .

[3]  Mirel Birlan,et al.  More than 160 near Earth asteroids observed in the EURONEAR network , 2010 .

[4]  Dorian Gorgan,et al.  NEARBY Platform for Detecting Asteroids in Astronomical Images Using Cloud-based Containerized Applications , 2018, 2018 IEEE 14th International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP).

[5]  M. Birlan,et al.  Mining the ESO WFI and INT WFC archives for known Near Earth Asteroids. Mega‐Precovery software , 2013, 1301.6902.

[6]  O. Vaduvescua,et al.  EURONEAR : First results , 2008 .

[7]  Larry Denneau,et al.  The Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System , 2013, 1302.7281.

[8]  E. Bertin,et al.  SExtractor: Software for source extraction , 1996 .

[9]  J. Licandro,et al.  EURONEAR - Recovery, Follow-up and Discovery of NEAs and MBAs using Large Field 1-2m Telescopes , 2011, 1108.5780.

[10]  Detlef Koschny,et al.  The Teide Observatory Tenerife Asteroid Survey , 2014 .

[11]  P. Alam.  ‘O’ , 2021, Composites Engineering: An A–Z Guide.

[12]  Robert Jedicke,et al.  The digest2 NEO Classification Code , 2019, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

[13]  Doug Tody,et al.  The Iraf Data Reduction And Analysis System , 1986, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[14]  S. Roweis,et al.  ASTROMETRY.NET: BLIND ASTROMETRIC CALIBRATION OF ARBITRARY ASTRONOMICAL IMAGES , 2009, 0910.2233.

[15]  M. Birlan,et al.  739 observed NEAs and new 2–4 m survey statistics within the EURONEAR network ☆ , 2013, 1308.5594.

[16]  O. Toloza,et al.  280 one-opposition near-Earth asteroids recovered by the EURONEAR with the Isaac Newton Telescope , 2017, 1711.00709.

[17]  Marta Mejail,et al.  Astronomical Image Data Reduction for Moving Object Detection , 2013, CIARP.

[18]  Dorian Gorgan,et al.  Asteroids detection tehnique: Classic “blink”: An automated approch , 2018, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Automation, Quality and Testing, Robotics (AQTR).

[19]  Detlef Koschny,et al.  Activities in Europe related to the mitigation of the threat from near-Earth objects , 2015 .

[20]  Eric Bertin,et al.  Automatic Astrometric and Photometric Calibration with SCAMP , 2006 .

[21]  M. Skrutskie,et al.  The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) , 2006 .

[22]  M. Birlan,et al.  Mining the CFHT Legacy Survey for known Near Earth Asteroids , 2011 .

[23]  Dorian Gorgan,et al.  NEARBY Platform: Algorithm for Automated Asteroids Detection in Astronomical Images , 2018, 2018 IEEE 14th International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP).

[24]  V. S. Dhillon,et al.  First EURONEAR NEA discoveries from La Palma using the INT★ , 2015 .