Near-Earth Asteroid Discovered Via Crowdsourcing

astroengine writes "The ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program has scored its first hit. Although SSA astronomers have detected asteroids before, this is the first time that a near-Earth object (NEO) has been spotted by the group of volunteers who analyze automated data from the 1-meter ESA Optical Ground Station telescope on Tenerife. Although details are scant, asteroid 2011 SF108's orbit takes it to a closest approach of 30 million kilometers (19 million miles, or roughly 100 times the average Earth-moon distance) from Earth — a distance considered 'safe.'"

Comments

Not a first: Spacewatch did this earlier

[Dr La]

Interesting as it is, this is not a "first". The Spacewatch program "crowdsourced" the search for NEA by using volunteer plate inspectors between 2004 and 2006 (the Spacewatch FMO project) and discovered 43 new NEA this way (http://fmo.lpl.arizona.edu/discoveries.cfm). I personally discovered 2005 GG81, a small Amor asteroid, as a volunteer plate reviewer in this project.