New Asteroid discovered by Delhi students

New Asteroid has been discovered by two Delhi students during the unique astronomy project connected to US space agency NASA. Both of them will get an opportunity to name the asteroid. Last year for the first time two Delhi students had discovered a main belt asteroid during the same programme. Students of about 60 schools from across India participated; where two students- Vaibhav Sapra and Sharanjeet Singh, Class 12 students of Bal Bharati Public School in Pitampura, have discovered a main belt asteroid (2011 QM14) this month during the All India Asteroid Search Campaign (AIASC).

This campaign was a collaborative action of NGO Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) along with the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), an international educational outreach programme, which also involves students. Both of them were on top of the universe after they received a communication in this regard from IASC director Patrick Miller Aug 27. The AIASC campaign provides an opportunity for students to collaborate and analyze data for asteroid hunting in its second year.

The participants are being provided hands-on training to go through exclusive data files of the sky provided by IASC using astronomical data analysis software. Space Group Chief Managing Director Sachin Bahmba said that, these data files had the images of the sky in the dark with 24-inch and 32-inch telescopes at the Astronomical Research Institute (ARI) Observatory in the US.

Vaibhav and Sharanjeet said that, "they were working on this for the last one-and-a-half months. We used to gather the data every day for two-three hours and send our observations to IASC." It was a tough task for both of us along with the studies and we have sent in total 11 observations and have got confirmation for one. We haven't decided the name yet as it will take three-four years before we get to name it.

Source: Richha Bhatnagar (Shiksha Team)