AP man leads find of near-earth asteroids - Deccan Chronicle

KAKINADA: A six-member team of science communicators in Andhra Pradesh discovered four new Asteroids Near-Earth Objects during a 45-day training programme conducted by All India Asteroid Search Programme as part of the Saptarishi India Asteroid Search Campaign under the umbrella of International Astronomical Search Cooperation under NASA grant and with support from Vigyan Prasar of Government of India (VIPNET).

Gurrayya said that the science communicators and science teachers selected in the Asteroid Search Campaign set a new paradigm in scientific discovery.

Under this programme of Asteroid search, specific astronomical photographs obtained from Pan-STARRS Observatory are analyzed by software-trained citizen scientists and hence come to the preliminary discoveries by detecting the presence of asteroids near-earth objects.

Gurrayya said that the selected participants for this entire Asteroid Search Campaign underwent a rigorous 45-day asteroid-hunting training and the team led by him achieved a successful preliminary discovery of four asteroids Near-Earth Objectives.