Discovery of Jupiter Family Comet 2011 UG₁₀₄ Through AI Enhanced Citizen Science

We report the discovery of cometary activity from minor planet 2011 UG 104 , which we classify as a Jupiter Family Comet (JFC). This discovery was aided by our Artificial Intelligence (AI) classification system: TailNet . JFC's, short-period comets with eccentric Jupiter-crossing orbits, originate from the Kuiper Belt and thus give us unique insight into the composition and distribution of volatiles in the outer solar system, past and present. Our AI assistant TailNet first classified 2011 UG 104 as active, which was affirmed by Citizen Scientists on our NASA Partner Program Active Asteroids . Through further archival image searches our science team found evidence of activity on 2011 UG 104 on three separate observations from 2021 February to 2021 April (81.°8 < f < 95.°0).