Hello theSkyNet Members,
Firstly, we have some great news to share that was announced yesterday by the International Astronomical Union - theSkyNet's name suggestion was selected for an exoplanet!
The planet around the star Pollux is now named Thestias thanks to djrichmatthews' suggestion. All the final names and the statistics can be seen on the official IAU webpage.
Artist's impression of Pollux and newly minted 'Thestias'. Credit: NASA/ESA and G. Bacon (STScI).
You might notice that Thestias is suspiciously NOT the name we submitted (which was Leda). This is because Leda is the name of both a moon around Jupiter and an asteroid in the Solar System, so the IAU asked if we'd mind suggesting something else that's related to Pollux and Leda from Greek Mythology. Thestias is Pollux's grandfather (Leda's Dad) so it's a fitting change.
We're SO EXCITED with this result, congratulations to everyone who suggested, voted and was involved, it was a true team effort and we're so pleased that your name was chosen. Congratulations!
theSkyNet SourceFinder 2.0 (beta)
Coming soon to a BOINC manager near you!
Ryan (our intern) and Alex have been working really hard to bring SourceFinder up and running on BOINC. We expect we will be announcing its beta availability in the new year! We have all the data ready to go, and most of the BOINC infrastructure is coded and online, we're just finishing up the final touches with an assimilator (that puts the results you guys will send back to us into a database) and a few other checks and quality controls through the system.
Thank you so much for your patience with this one, Ryan was only with us for one day a week, and has now officially graduated and taken a job in industry so he won't be around much at all anymore! Congratulations from all of us at theSkyNet Ryan, and good luck in your new job.
Happy Holidays
Finally, we'd like to wish everyone a very happy and safe holiday season. Whether you're celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, the New Year or any other holiday, we hope your time is filled with good fun, good food and good people!
Thanks, and happy crunching,
TheSkyNet Team.
