Icehunters.
There was an organized project on the internet to examine photos taken with the Subaru Telescope for potential flyby targets for New Horizons after it went past Pluto last summer.
You signed on, and then started looking at thumbnail image pairs. The idea was to highlight differences in the images. Differences would potentially indicate something had moved in the pictures, and since distant KBOs move, and the even more distant stars don't, by highlighting differences, you were potentially discovering KBOs.
There were difficulties, variable stars would simulate what we were looking for. And the image pairs were taken on different nights, so if the seeing conditions were different, and they usually were, there would be problems with the images.
Many, many problems.
I think the ratio of false positives to actual confirmed KBOs was like 1500 or so. So for every KBO ID'd in the project, 1500+ false positives had to be weeded out.
They also wanted multiple 'hits' for every potential target noted, so the one I found that was confirmed, there were at least 11 others that noted the same one I did.
They changed the confirmation criteria during the hunt too, pictures with (IIRC) with more than 3 potential hits were tossed. Turned out some of those were valid hits, so they started including them.
And then when all the images had been scanned and all the new KBOs ID'd and their positions compared to what maneuvering capability New Horizons had left, not one was a suitable target.
So they got some observing time on Hubble, lest the follow on flyby fail to occur, and Hubble images noted 2 targets. They picked one, New Horizons fired thrusters to target it last fall, and we are on our way to closely examine it in a few years.
There was an organized project on the internet to examine photos taken with the Subaru Telescope for potential flyby targets for New Horizons after it went past Pluto last summer.
You signed on, and then started looking at thumbnail image pairs. The idea was to highlight differences in the images. Differences would potentially indicate something had moved in the pictures, and since distant KBOs move, and the even more distant stars don't, by highlighting differences, you were potentially discovering KBOs.
There were difficulties, variable stars would simulate what we were looking for. And the image pairs were taken on different nights, so if the seeing conditions were different, and they usually were, there would be problems with the images.
Many, many problems.
I think the ratio of false positives to actual confirmed KBOs was like 1500 or so. So for every KBO ID'd in the project, 1500+ false positives had to be weeded out.
They also wanted multiple 'hits' for every potential target noted, so the one I found that was confirmed, there were at least 11 others that noted the same one I did.
They changed the confirmation criteria during the hunt too, pictures with (IIRC) with more than 3 potential hits were tossed. Turned out some of those were valid hits, so they started including them.
And then when all the images had been scanned and all the new KBOs ID'd and their positions compared to what maneuvering capability New Horizons had left, not one was a suitable target.
So they got some observing time on Hubble, lest the follow on flyby fail to occur, and Hubble images noted 2 targets. They picked one, New Horizons fired thrusters to target it last fall, and we are on our way to closely examine it in a few years.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
