Image of asteroid Itokawa

Asteroids are small rocky objects orbiting around the Sun.

Although most orbit in the distant Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, some come much closer and could even hit the Earth. Obviously we want to find and track these Near Earth Objects (NEOs for short) so that if any are likely to hit us, we can try and stop them.

The aim of this project is for you to help with this important work by searching for NEOs in observations we have taken, and report back their positions. With your results, we can then calculate the orbits of the NEOs and work out if any could be "killer asteroids".

The following sections will guide you through the process of identifying and tracking near-earth asteroids:

Learn how we detect asteroids

Carry out the Asteroids Workshop to learn how to detect asteroids using LTImage

Measuring the position of Near Earth Objects (NEOs)

Download some recent observations to analyse

Report your results

Minor Planet Center Reports