Asteroids@home—A BOINC distributed computing project for asteroid shape reconstruction

• Asteroids@home is a distributed computing project.
• It runs in the framework of Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.
• Shape models of asteroids are reconstructed from disk-integrated photometry.

We present the project Asteroids@home that uses distributed computing to solve the time-consuming inverse problem of shape reconstruction of asteroids. The project uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) framework to distribute, collect, and validate small computational units that are solved independently at individual computers of volunteers connected to the project. Shapes, rotational periods, and orientations of the spin axes of asteroids are reconstructed from their disk-integrated photometry by the lightcurve inversion method.