The continuing monitoring and surveying of the nearby space to detect Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are essential because of the threats that this kind of objects impose on the future of our planet. We need more computational resources and advanced algorithms to deal with the exponential growth of the digital cameras' performances and to be able to process (in near real-time) data coming from large surveys. This paper presents a software platform called NEARBY that supports automated detection of moving sources (asteroids) among stars from astronomical images. The detection procedure is based on the classic "blink" detection and, after that, the system supports visual analysis techniques to validate the moving sources, assisted by static and dynamical presentations.
The first automatic detection improved algorithm, that cleans all stars in all individual images before combining them, was developed by @cite_13 . The algorithm uses many CCD images in order to detect very dark moving objects that are invisible on a single CCD image. It was applied for the first time on a very small 35-cm telescope to discover few asteroids up to mag 21 upon combination of 40 individual images exposed each for 3 minutes.
@cite_13
2037538319
We have devised an automatic detection algorithm for unresolved moving objects, such as asteroids and comets. The algorithm uses many CCD images in order to detect very dark moving objects that are invisible on a single CCD image. We carried out a trial observation to investigate its usefulness, using a 35-cm telescope. By using the algorithm, we succeeded to detect asteroids down to about 21mag. This algorithm will contribute significantly to searches for near-Earth objects and to solar-system astronomy.