Asteroid named after Roane State Community College professor

Roane State Community College professor Ted Stryk now has an asteroid that officially bears his name thanks to his efforts working with NASA to provide them with image processing services. The English and Philosophy professor contributed image processing services to the NASA New Horizons team, which was the first spacecraft to explore Pluto, Pluto’s moons, and the Kuiper Belt.

According to an article on Roane State Community College’s website, Stryk explained his role in the New Horizons team. He is quoted as saying, “Image processing involves using computer algorithms to manipulate images, to improve their quality, and extract information to make them more suitable for analysis. Unlike studying the earth, where we can simply take better photos if the ones we have aren’t good enough, it would take decades to get back out to the outer solar system. So extracting every bit of information we can from the images we have is an important task.”

Stryk was able to reprocess images from NASA missions from the 1970s and 1980s, producing better quality images to allow scientists clearer up-close views of the outer solar system. Images that Stryk reprocessed included ones of Neptune and Uranus that have aided in understanding Pluto and its moons.

These major contributions are what led to the asteroid being named after Stryk. His asteroid, (230728) Tedstryk, was first discovered in 2003 by Mark Buie. It is believed that (230728) Tedstryk is a fragment of the proto-planet Themis.

Stryk said, “For asteroids like Tedstryk that are members of asteroid families, the most interesting thing is to see what are, in effect, small fragments of small planets, which allows scientists to see parts of them which would be deep inside an intact planet.”

When Stryk was first contacted about working with NASA in 2009, he was uncertain about whether the offer was legitimate. He said, “I still remember when I first received the email asking me to come work with the mission, I actually checked the IP address to make sure it was legit before responding.”

He went on to explain how the situation has turned into a dream come true: “When I was a kid, I had two dreams. I was going to be a Major League Baseball player. I wasn’t good enough to be a little league starter, so that wasn’t happening. And I was going to work on the Pluto mission, whenever it came. So the fact that this one actually happened still doesn’t seem real. This recognition of my work in planetary science, especially relating to this mission, is icing on the cake.”

The asteroid (230728) Tedstryk has been recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

For more information about Roane State Community College, visit the school’s website.