Asteroid Institute engineers presented online at this year’s Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) conference, held in November. The ADASS conference serves as a premier forum for exchanging ideas on software development and data analysis within the astronomical community.

The institute’s Head of Software Engineering, Alec Koumjian, delivered a talk titled Optimized Open-Source Tools for Scalable Solar System Science. He showcased the tools available on the Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) platform, including adam_core, which is designed for efficient large-scale orbital calculations, coordinate transformations, and asteroid detection. Alec explained how open-source tools such as THOR, used for asteroid discovery, and Precovery, for matching survey data, enable scalable and precise analysis, prioritizing speed and accessibility.

Nate Tellis provided a deep dive into the engineering work behind the discovery of 27,500 previously undetected asteroids using THOR on the NOIRLab Source Catalog. By leveraging advanced tools such as Google Cloud, Dagster, and Ray, the project processed 1.7 billion point sources, utilizing 8.5 million vCPU hours to identify 27,500 candidate discoveries, including near-Earth objects. His presentation highlighted THOR’s ability to link observations across datasets without requiring tracklets and its scalable, innovative architecture.

Learn more about Asteroid Institute at b612.ai.