Daria Alice Ciobanu

Daria Alice is a collaborator and data reducer in the EUROpean Near Earth Asteroid Research (EURONEAR) project, coordinated by astronomer Dr. Ovidiu Văduvescu of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes in La Palma, Spain. As part of the NEARBY project (2018-present), funded by the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) under the ESA-SSA initiative, they worked with the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (UTCN) and the University of Craiova. In a team of 15 professional and amateur astronomers, she performed real-time data reduction and asteroid observations on the NEARBY Romanian platform, utilizing images from the Isaac Newton Telescope. This effort resulted in determining orbit parameters, positions, and risk factors of Near Earth Asteroids, and led to the discovery of three Mars-Crosser and one Hungaria asteroid.

Additionally, she has made notable contributions to the Virtual Impactor search using Mega-Precovery (VIMP) project. From 2019-2020 and resuming in 2022, she analyzed images from EURONEAR’s Mega-Archive using VIMP software developed in Romania. This project involved mining data from Blanco/DECam images to observe and refine orbits of Virtual Impactor asteroids. Her work included measuring 31 asteroids and successfully recovering 11 Virtual Impactors, with results published in the Minor Planet Center database. The VIMP 2 project commenced in fall 2022.

In recognition of their research and discoveries, she held a presentation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), highlighting accomplishments and contributions to asteroid observations and orbit determination.

Her academic journey has recently taken a significant leap forward with admission into the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech). This new chapter marks a continuation of my commitment to advancing astronomical research and contributing to the global understanding of asteroid dynamics.

As a coauthor, she contributed to the following publications:

•⁠  ⁠”Ready for EURONEAR NEA surveys using the NEARBY moving source detection platform” (O. Văduvescu, D. Gorgan, D. Copandean, D. Ciobanu, et al.), New Astronomy, Vol. 88, 101600, 2021.

•⁠  ⁠”Dozens of virtual impactor orbits eliminated by the EURONEAR VIMP DECam data mining project” (O. Văduvescu, L. Curelaru, M. Popescu, B. Danila, and D. Ciobanu), Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 642, A35, 2020.