CAREER: Bridging Minor Planet and Meteor Science in the Era of Big Data

职业：大数据时代架起小行星和流星科学的桥梁

• 批准号: 1944827
• 负责人: Nicholas Moskovitz
• 金额: $ 80.87万
• 依托单位: Lowell Observatory
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1944827&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Bridging; Minor; Planet; Meteor

Minor planets (also called asteroids) are pristine relics of the ancient Solar System. All meteorites that have fallen to Earth to date are believed to have come from minor planets. These meteorites are our only direct link to the earliest epoch of Solar System formation approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Understanding the connections between meteors and minor planets will help astronomers develop better theories for conditions on the young Earth. The proposed work will deploy a network of video cameras to increase the rate of meteor detection over Arizona, create a database of these meteors to enable new research into their orbits before hitting Earth, automate the search for parent asteroids for these bodies, and develop a tool to retroactively search existing data sets for pre-impact detections of large meteors. The PI will work with staff and students at Northern Arizona University’s Visual Communications department to develop an interactive exhibit that will enable users from the general public to visualize meteor paths and minor planet orbits. The exhibit will be displayed at Lowell Observatory’s Visitor Center and at the Meteor Crater Visitor Center. Undergraduates at NAU and NSF REU students will take part in the work. The research will also have practical implications for discovering and characterizing meteors that might be a threat to Earth.The origin of meteoroids is not well understood, but it must involve several processes: collisions, mass loss due to volatile sublimation, and mass shedding due to rotational spin-up. These processes produce meteor streams, meteoroids traveling on similar paths that produce meteor showers when they impact the Earth. Over 100 meteor showers have been well established, with hundreds more unconfirmed, and the majority have no known parent asteroid or comet. The work will seek to connect meteor showers to their parent bodies. Lowell Observatory presently operates four stations to monitor meteors. Eight new stations will be added under this grant. Additionally, a more powerful database will be developed that will enable investigators to search for relational studies and to investigate lightcurves.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

小行星（也称为小行星）是古代太阳系的原始遗迹。到目前为止，所有落在地球上的陨石都被认为来自小行星。这些陨石是我们与太阳系形成的最早时期（大约45亿年前）的唯一直接联系。了解流星和小行星之间的联系将有助于天文学家为年轻地球的状况发展更好的理论。拟议的工作将部署一个视频摄像机网络，以提高亚利桑那州的流星探测率，创建一个这些流星的数据库，以便在撞击地球之前对它们的轨道进行新的研究，自动搜索这些天体的母小行星，并开发一个工具来追溯搜索现有的数据集，以便在撞击前检测大型流星。PI将与北亚利桑那大学视觉传播系的工作人员和学生合作，开发一个互动展览，使公众用户能够可视化流星路径和小行星轨道。展览将在洛厄尔天文台的游客中心和陨石坑游客中心展出。南京农业大学的本科生和NSF REU的学生将参加这项工作。这项研究还将对发现和描述可能对地球构成威胁的流星具有实际意义。流星体的起源尚不清楚，但它肯定涉及几个过程：碰撞、挥发性升华造成的质量损失，以及旋转自旋向上造成的质量脱落。这些过程产生了流星雨，流星体以类似的路径运行，当它们撞击地球时产生流星雨。已经确定的流星雨超过100个，还有数百个未经证实，其中大多数没有已知的母小行星或彗星。这项工作将寻求将流星雨与其母体联系起来。洛厄尔天文台目前有四个观测站监测流星。这笔拨款将增加8个新的电台。此外，将开发一个更强大的数据库，使研究人员能够搜索相关研究和调查光曲线。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。