(Photo By: NASA on Unsplash)
By: Naama Barak - April 13, 2021
An Israeli student recently discovered previously unknown asteroids for US space agency NASA, which in turn honored her by naming them after her.
Aseel Nama, who’s studying biomedical engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, participated in the International Astronomical Search Collaboration, a citizen science program affiliated with NASA that invites the public to search for asteroids using astronomical data that it provides.
Nama used image segmentation techniques that she learned at university to pore over the data she received and managed to find two new asteroids.
“I received from NASA a set of photos and video clips and I had to find new asteroids in them. I called my ‘team’ ANI (Aseel Nama Israel) and the asteroids that I discovered will be called ANI1801 and ANI2001,” she says.
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