Introduction

The asteroid research citizen science project is part of NASA’s planetary defense program, which monitors asteroids in our solar system, including those that could potentially impact Earth in the future. To engage the public in this defense program, Dr. Patrick Miller at Hardin-Simmons University established the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) in 2006 (Miller, 2018).
PACS e-Lab is IASC’s largest partner in Africa. This partnership enabled the founding of  PACS e-Lab, and has since become a prerequisite for all projects we offer. When new members join our amateur research community, they are encouraged to form groups and are trained in using the Astrometrica program to search for asteroids using practice datasets. Participants learn to analyze these datasets, prepare Minor Planet Center (MPC) reports, and submit them to IASC. Once trained, PACS e-Lab registers these groups with IASC’s Pan African Asteroid Search Campaign to receive fresh datasets for analysis.
The datasets are provided to IASC by the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) (Chambers et al., 2016) at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy and the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) (Larson et al., 2003) at the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. These telescopes use automated pipelines to detect asteroids; however, faint asteroids with low signal-to-noise ratios often evade detection by these systems, necessitating manual analysis by citizen scientists (Miller et al., 2024).
The campaign operates monthly, and participating teams receive certificates of participation from IASC. Reports submitted are evaluated within a week to determine if the asteroid observations are valid. Valid observations are designated as preliminary discoveries, which undergo further evaluation for six months to a year. If confirmed as real asteroids, these become provisional discoveries and are assigned provisional numbers before being cataloged in the MPC database, maintained by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Paris. This data is also shared with NASA’s JPL Small-Body Database, where orbital parameters and other details are refined and made publicly available.
After several years, teams may have the opportunity to name their discoveries, marking a significant achievement in their contribution to planetary defense and asteroid research. 

Since our inception, over 1,000 individuals from 50 African countries have participated in our asteroid hunting programs. Between 2021 and 2023, dozens of participants from several countries contributed to the detection of new asteroids (see list), playing a direct role in the global effort to safeguard our planet.

Requirements

• A computer (A windows OS, win 7,8,10 and above)
• Good Internet
• Time commitment both during training and the research (At least 4 hours per week)
• Minimum of 3 persons to form a group (No Maximum).
• Passion for astronomy.