Huge Survey vs. Tiny Space Junk

June 3, 2024 | AAS Nova

As construction continues on the Vera Rubin Observatory, the skies above its mountaintop home grow more and more crowded following every rocket launch. Astronomers, conscious of the plans for mega-constellations of new satellites in the next few years, are rightfully worried: will these satellites and the tiny bits of debris that come with every deployment […]

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Stars and satellites as seen by the Dark Energy Camera

Lucy in the Sky with Debris

May 31, 2024 |

Earlier this year, DiRAC Fellows Meredith Rawls, Dino Bektešević, and Colin Orion Chandler contributed interviews and satellite-streaked telescope images to an interdisciplinary research and visual art project on the visibility of orbital debris by artist Isabella Ong and curator Seet Yun Teng. The project included an exhibition during April 2024 in Singapore. Isabella originally reached […]

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Poster for Lucy in the Sky with Debris

Algorithms pioneered at DiRAC help Asteroid Institute and Google Identify 27,500 New Asteroids

April 30, 2024 | DiRAC News

The Solar System group at the DiRAC Institute at the University of Washington has dedicated efforts to advancing asteroid and comet discovery algorithms for large datasets and next generation surveys. Our enduring partnership with the Asteroid Institute has yielded significant progress, resulting in the development of a novel algorithm known as Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery […]

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Husky Giving Day 2024: Support astronomy students today!

March 25, 2024 |

Your contribution on Husky Giving Day (HGD) is a catalyst for a student-centered initiative led by DiRAC and the Department of Astronomy!  Make a gift today! Join us in our mission to achieve 20 gifts before April 4th and unlock a $10,000 challenge. Every contribution, regardless of the amount, brings us closer to our goal. […]

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Citizen Scientists Uncover Hidden Secrets of the Solar System: “Active Asteroids” Project Reveals Dozens of Rare Celestial Bodies

March 18, 2024 | Colin Orion Chandler

In a groundbreaking collaboration between scientists and the global community, the “Active Asteroids” Citizen Science project has unveiled a trove of discoveries, shedding light on a poorly understood population of objectspreviously unknown “active minor planets” in our solar system. Launched on August 31, 2021, through a NASA Partner program hosted on the Zooniverse online platform, […]

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