As of today, there is now a brand new way to search for main-belt on Comet Hunters. For the past several months, the science team has been developing a classification interface to incorporate images from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Survey.
HSC covers more of the night sky in a single exposure than any other camera on a 8-10-m class ground-based telescope, the largest in the world. Thanks to the HSC Survey Collaboration we are able to provide to you asteroid observations from as fresh off the telescope as we can get to search for unknown main-belt comets lurking in the asteroid belt. These observations provide the unique opportunity to follow-up with other ground- and space-based telescopes immediately and study the evolution of the outburst and shape of the emitted dust tail.
No one has ever looked through these images for main-belt comets before. You will be one of the first people to see these images. Who knows what we’ll find? Help search for main-belt comets in the HSC images today at www.comethunters.org
Thanks for all your help!
Meg from Comet Hunters
Daily Zooniverse 