NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare "Active Asteroids"

Some extraordinary asteroids have "activity"—comet-like tails or envelopes of gas and dust. NASA's Active Asteroids project announced the discovery of activity on fifteen asteroids, challenging conventional wisdom about the solar system.

To find these fifteen rare objects, more than 8000 volunteers combed through 430,000 images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile. A paper about the results , now published in the Astronomical Journal, includes nine volunteers among the co-authors.

"For an amateur astronomer like me it's a dream come true." said volunteer Virgilio Gonano from Udine, Italy. "Congratulations to all the staff and the friends that also check the images!"

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