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PHP Simple Automatic Asteroid Detector

It is a desktop program, intended to automatically detect asteroids on set of photos, similarly like NASA's Asteroid Data Hunter did. Due to php 5 being outdated and php-Gtk3 not ready yet, and also due to lack of my resources for such large project (with sufficient resources it would be possible to rewrite it with web-based UI), this project is temporarily stalled. If you want to test it anyway, first check files:

• doc/README.txt
• README.txt in each subfolder in modules/

since program uses additional framework and libraries to work.

Program is modular, and is designed to run smoothly on PC with 4GB RAM or even less, also taking advantage of multiple processor cores to speed up detection.

Other similar solutions

If you want to detect asteroids on your photos and this project is still not finished, you may check other programs to automatically detect asteroids on set of photos (list is not limited to open source, most likely to be functional are - in order - 13., 2., 8., 9., 10., 11.):

1. Asteroid Data Hunter
   • https://sourceforge.net/projects/asteroiddatahunter/
   • https://github.com/PlanetaryResources/NTL-Asteroid-Data-Hunter
   • open source, Apache License 2.0
   • not functional, error occurs during processing
   • written in Java (frontend) and C++ (backend)
2. Umbrella library with ViaNearby desktop application
   • Umbrella: https://github.com/mostanes/umbrella2 GNU General Public License v3.0
   • ViaNearby: https://github.com/mostanes/umbrella2-euronear
   • there are some papers about this software, for example about ViaNearby with screens https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343599187_The_Umbrella_software_suite_for_automated_asteroid_detection
   • about Umbrella: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ascl.soft08006S/abstract
   • written in C#
   • last updated in September 2021
3. Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System (MOPS)
   • there are some papers about it, ie. https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.7281
   • it is older software than famous Asteroid Data Hunter (paper above is from 2013), so it seems to be unlikely that there is desktop application, however it's hard to me to find further info about this program
4. AIsteroid
   • https://github.com/seap-udea/AIsteroid
   • open source, GNU General Public License v3.0
   • AI based
   • last update in January 2018
   • however I was unable to run it to test it
5. Asteroid-detetctor
   • https://github.com/Aniket10k/Asteroid-detetctor
   • seems to be very simplistic, capabilities to detect multiple asteroids would need to be tested (possibly only one asteroid on a set of images is detected), and also doesn't seem to have correction for image noises, program does not prepare any reports
   • written fully in MATLAB
6. sdss_asteroid_detect
   • https://github.com/xquery/sdss_asteroid_detect
   • open source, Apache License 2.0
   • written in C++
   • for detecting moving objects within Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) images
   • author claims that it may be unstable
7. asteroid-detect
   • https://github.com/di/asteroid-detect
   • proof of concept, for Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
   • written in Python
   • last update in May 2013
8. A-Track
   • https://github.com/akdeniz-uzay/A-Track
   • open source, GNU General Public License v3.0
   • designed to detect moving objects in FITS images; I didn't tried to test it but it seems to be quite well developed with reporting to MPC
   • written in Python
   • last update September 2019
9. A-Track-Modified
   • https://github.com/Eririf/A-Track-Modified
   • open source, GNU General Public License v3.0
   • modified A-Track for wide FOV telescope asteroid detection
   • written in Python
   • last update September 2022 (that means that it may be active as of writing of this list)
10. heyJatin/Astro.py
    • https://github.com/heyJatin/Astro.py
    • open source, GNU General Public License v3.0
    • Asteroid Detection in .fits files using Tensorflow Keras
    • AI based, written in Python
    • last update February 2021
11. neural-nets-for-the-detection-of-fast-and-faint-asteroids
    • https://github.com/frankxwang/neural-nets-for-the-detection-of-fast-and-faint-asteroids
    • AI based, written in Python
    • last update in October 2021
12. NEARBY
    • platform for detecting asteroids, example paper about it: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8516578
    • I couldn't find any more info about it
13. Astrometrica
    • http://www.astrometrica.at
    • shareware (100 days for free)
    • has capability of detecting moving objects
14. SALTAD
    • https://github.com/NASA-Planetary-Science/SALTAD
    • software available on written request only
    • written in C
    • detection of asteroids with non-linear motion on images
    • last update in 2017
15. Asteroid_Detector
    • https://kandi.openweaver.com/python/rankinstudio/Asteroid_Detector (links to GitHub repository https://github.com/rankinstudio/Asteroid_Detector but such repository does not exist or is private)
    • open source, MIT License
    • written in Python

Other related solutions

There are some programs, which do related task (though not the same)

1. MIRI-asteroid-detection
   • https://github.com/StellaTsilia/MIRI-asteroid-detection
   • extract a fixed source of light out of a moving one
   • for asteroid detection via James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
   • last update in July 2020

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Project Members:

• Tomasz Dąbski CzarnyZajaczek (admin)