Hi,
I'm trying to get a more concrete idea of what sort of work my computer is doing for Asteroids@home, so I have a few questions that after digging around on the forums, I couldn't really find any answers.

I know the computation for an asteroid's shape and spin is split into 250-300 parts. What are these parts? As in, what sort of calculations are done in these work units?

Does one work unit concentrate on one component of the calculation, and another a different component? What are these components?

Is the computation sequential or segmented? (Sorry, have very little idea what this is all about so this question may be irrelevant or nonsensical) That is to say, is the shape and spin calculated by splitting the lightcurve into pieces and handing each of those out as computations, or do the work units build off of one another (sequential), meaning that one work unit's input is dependent on another work unit's output?

Right now, work units don't really mean anything to me, and credits even less. I'd love to know more about what goes into a work unit.

Thanks!

Same here... I would be interested in knowing what's being computed, how, and how numbers can work as representing physical parameters... I do like working for this project, and want to see if I can contribute from my own expertise :)

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The babydoll in my avatar is Hayley Westenra, the finest soprano on the face of this planet or any other...

Looks to me like the "officals" aren't very interested in giving us replies.

I wonder if they realize, that they are somewhat dependent on us.

Very poor performance - maybe I should stop crunching.

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On the Home page, there is an link that takes you to DAMIT. It also explains the light inversion theory that used to collect an asteroids info. The info collected is broken down into the Work Units (WUs) that we process. So, If you go to

http://astro.troja.mff.cuni.cz/projects/asteroids3D/web.php?page=db_tumblers

you can find some great info, and if you download the

•2008 TC3 (MPEG-4/AVI 22.6 MiB)

listed there, you will see the result of our work on that one particular asteroid. Somewhere, there is a listing with what would be "pictures" of the asteroids, and who worked on them.

Hope this helps.

James

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Thank you James Lee for pointing us to the articles at DAMIT.

Still I feel a bit disappointed from the lack of information within project's web site. For example what WU's Name means (ex. ps_171122_input_103453_2_0)? Which asteroid it is related to? If it is a part from bigger model - how its look like? If that bigger model has its own parent - what is it? How basic model is gathered - optical images, radio images, specters, how those images looks like, etc. etc...

I'm pretty sure you like the rest of the contributors here are curious and looking to find answers to these (and many more) questions too.
The subject about better knowing of our space neighborhood is like a hot ember for the past decades. So if project owners expect better results, may be it is a good time to become more active on the subject. Otherwise all this lefts bad taste and doubt through all of us.

Regards,
Georgi

Georgi,

Over the years on this project, the one thing that I have found is that this project has one solid piece of glue that holds it all together. That glue is Kyong. He is our fearless leader that has a full time job elsewhere, but puts all of his efforts in here to try to make things run as smooth as possible. All this, even though there are changes of equipment, personal living moves, job changes, etc. AND, he has to put up with bad, incorrect, or improperly formatted received data that all has to be straightened out. Yes, he could probably use our help more than we give. This project does not receive a lot of donations as others, nor the amount of engineers that could make things run what we would like as "smoother" or passing along more information about what is going on. If Kyong spent even thirty 30 minutes doing some of those things, then there are other areas that would suffer. My suggestion would be more of asking Kyong, via PM, what those qualified can do to help.. time, formatting, donations, etc. He is the TRUE HERO behind the scenes. But, even heroes can use our help!

James

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