Planetary Defense With a Network of Compact, Smart and Low-Cost Digital Telescopes
Abstract
Unistellar is building the largest network of compact, easy-to-use, smart and digital telescope called the Enhanced Vision telescope (or eVscope) with the goal of bringing back to the people the joy of exploring the universe by observing deep sky objects from their home. The SETI Institute is a scientific partner of the project which will develop the scientific applications of this network. To date, ~1000 eVscopes have been shipped and by December the network will be larger that 3,000 eVscopes from citizen astronomers located in Europe, America, Australia, Japan and other places. We are currently developing pilot programs to test the capabilities of the eVscope network to conduct meaningful scientific studies in Planetary Defense. First scientific results collected with citizen astronomers in Europe and North America will be presented, this includes astrometric positions of asteroids up to 16.5 V-magnitude and lightcurves of asteroids up to 15.2 V-magnitude. Today a dozen of active citizen astronomers have participated to our program. Thanks to them, we have gathered more than 70 scientific observations of 15 different asteroids (NEA candidate, NEA and main-belt asteroids).
We will also discuss the potential of the eVscope at schools (e.g. community colleges in the US) and informal education centers (national parks, museums, youth associations) so the young generation educate themselves and participate to the defense of our planet against asteroid impacts.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMNH0370008A
- Keywords:
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- 4328 Risk;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4339 Disaster mitigation;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4342 Emergency management;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4351 International organizations and natural disasters;
- NATURAL HAZARDS