International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC)

The International Astronomical Search Collaboration, known as IASC and pronounced Isaac, is a citizen science organisation that gives school and community teams access to professional astronomical survey data. It was founded in October 2006 by mathematics professor J. Patrick Miller, who continues to direct it, and it runs as a free service kept going largely by volunteer staff. IASC exists to put genuine research data into the hands of students. Teams download image sequences taken by professional survey telescopes, analyse them with astrometry software, and submit measurement reports that IASC astronomers vet before forwarding them to the Minor Planet Center. Around ten thousand teams from more than one hundred countries take part each year, and participants have recorded over seven thousand asteroid discoveries since the first campaign. The organisation runs month-long asteroid search campaigns roughly eleven times a year, alongside the 100 Hours for 100 Schools telescope-time project delivered with Las Cumbres Observatory. Its work is carried out with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, the Catalina Sky Survey and the Global Hands-On Universe Association, and a network of collaborating science organisations coordinates national campaigns in India and other countries.