What can i do to help space science ?

[EarthlingX]

http://www.wired.com : NASA Needs You: 6 Ways to Help an Astronomer

June 28, 2010, 2:25 pm

By Lisa Grossman

Space is a big place, and even with their giant telescopes, astronomers just can’t cover it all. This is where you come in. Yes, you.

Astronomy is one of the few scientific fields where amateur scientists can, and frequently do, make significant contributions. But now space scientists are increasingly also looking to people with little or no training for help with their research. Sometimes they are looking for free labor for tasks that humans can still do better than computers, like identifying different types of galaxies. Other times it’s numbers of eyes on the sky or feet on the ground they’re after. But more and more, they are finding ways to get regular citizens involved.

Amateur astronomers and regular folks have already had an impact on the science by making observations of fleeting cosmic phenomena that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

When an asteroid or a comet hit Jupiter in July 2009 and then again earlier this month, amateur astronomers in Australia and the Philippines were the first to notice. Amateurs have invented new telescopes, kept tabs on variable stars and discovered comets. And you don’t even need any fancy equipment.

“We can learn a lot from someone taking a cellphone video of a meteor as it burns up in the atmosphere,” said Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.

 

[EarthlingX]

webservices.esa.int : Help us with the VMC

Students, teachers, scientists, photographers and the general public are invited to help us process the images, remove artefacts, increase sharpness and interpret what the images show. And if you have success, send us a copy - we'll publish the best submissions right here in the VMC site!

webservices.esa.int : School report: Mars Webcam Project by Colegiul National Iasi

next-generation.marssociety.de : NEXT GENERATION PROJECT

http://next-generation.marssociety.de/galery.htm

 

[EarthlingX]

wise.ssl.berkeley.edu : How Can You Help WISE Find Dangerous Asteroids?

Even if you aren't orbiting the Earth, you can still help WISE scientists find near-Earth objects (NEOs) and potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
All you need is a telescope with a digital camera, a dark area to observe from, and a computer with an internet connection to look at your images and report your discoveries.

Q: So how can I help?
A: It's easy! All you need to do is look up WISE NEOs on the Minor Planet Center's NEO confirmation page (http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/NEO/ToConfirm.html), download their predicted positions and errors, and start observing them. In particular, you'll need to measure the position of the object on the sky, called its astrometry. You'll also find an estimate of each object's brightness at optical wavelengths, called its visual magnitude. This tells you whether or not the object will be bright enough to see with your telescope, and how long an exposure time you will need.

 

[EarthlingX]

spacecoalition.com : Call for Citizen Scientists: Digital Earth Watch

July 29, 2010

By Leonard David



HONOLULU, Hawaii — There is a rapid emergence of citizen science and social networks that yields an exciting new means to become better stewards of our planet.

It’s called Community Remote Sensing (CRS) – a new field that combines remote sensing with citizen science, social networks, and crowd-sourcing to enhance the data obtained from traditional sources. It includes the collection, calibration, analysis, communication, or application of remotely sensed information by these community means.

The power of CRS is being spotlighted here at the 2010 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers meeting of the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS).

This year’s 30th IGARSS gathering is themed: “Remote Sensing: Global Vision for Local Action.”

Digital Earth Watch Network

One CRS idea that has been spotlighted is PicturePost – a part of the Digital Earth Watch (DEW) network. The activity was detailed during the meeting by a research team from the University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire.

DEW supports environmental monitoring by citizens, students and community organizations through digital photography and satellite imagery.

This activity allows you to measure environmental change in your neighborhood, and contribute to science networks.

For example, the range of PicturePost activities includes:

Adopt a Leaf – Plan and take repeated photographs that capture an event, such as the opening of leaves or flowers in the spring. See how a time-lapse video shows off the dynamic changes captured in your photographs.

Adopt a Tree Diameter – Plan and take repeated photographs that capture the changing diameter of one or more trees.

Adopt a Canopy – Plan and take repeated photographs that capture the changing percent leaf cover in a forest canopy.

Adopt a Season – Plan and take repeated photographs that capture the changing fall colors in deciduous trees.

Check out this Citizen Science site and start measuring the environment through digital images!

Go to: http://picturepost.unh.edu/

 

[a_lost_packet_]

A pretty awesome list of all sorts of things people can become involved in that helps science! Nicely done!

 

[MeteorWayne]

Not really related to the topic though...

What I do as citizen science:

Meteor Observing (Data reported to IMO and NAMN) (Related to Space Science )

CoCoRaHS: Prcipitation observation, used by NWS and State Climatologists, water managers, etc

Project Feederwatch and Great Backyard Bird count: Monitoring year to year changes in Bird populations.

Macroinvertebrate monitoring for the South Branch Watershed Association

Lectures, Classes, and public sessions at the NJAA, schools, and camps (Related to Space Science)

That's just a quick list...there are more

 

[EarthlingX]

Perhaps you can write a post for each of those activities and describe how people can get involved ?

This stations and observation posts really got me interested, because i can see a lot of possibilities for automatic data collection, with a very little investment. (hint: Arduino, Beagle Board)

For the moment, this is what i can do, so i'll try finding more ideas and organized efforts, and we'll see what comes out ..

ALP, thanks

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.nature.com : Citizen science: People power

by Eric Hand

Published online 4 August 2010 | Nature 466, 685-687 (2010) | doi:10.1038/466685a

The whole thing began by accident, says David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was 2005, and he and his colleagues had just unveiled Rosetta@home — one of those distributed-computing projects in which volunteers download a small piece of software and let their home computers do some extracurricular work when the machines would otherwise be idle. The downloaded program was devoted to the notoriously difficult problem of protein folding: determining how a linear chain of amino acids curls up into a three-dimensional shape that minimizes the internal stresses and strains — presumably the protein's natural shape. If the users wanted, they could watch on a screen saver as their computer methodically tugged and twisted the protein in search of a more favourable configuration.

 

[StarRider1701]

This stations and observation posts really got me interested, because i can see a lot of possibilities for automatic data collection, with a very little investment. (hint: Arduino, Beagle Board)

For the moment, this is what i can do, so i'll try finding more ideas and organized efforts, and we'll see what comes out ..

ALP, thanks

This is cool, thanks. I've always dreamed of having a telescope and watching the stars... Perhaps that will be my "occupation" if and when I retire. Its also nice to know that we "ordinary folk" can help out the heavy duty brains of the world. :mrgreen:

 

[kg]

Observing asteroid occultations of stars sounds like a great thing to do!
International Occultation Timing Association
http://www.occultations.org/
I've never done this myself but it sounds like fun and very helpful to science. These observations not only help to define the position and orbits of various asteroids but also their size, shape and possibly discover companions orbiting them. It doesn't sound terribly difficult to do and the more eyes watching the better. Amature astronamers seem to be welcome and needed to help!

 

[MeteorWayne]

Recently (Oct 9,2009), a few observations were made of the occultation of a Kuiper Belt Object (55636, or 2002 TX300) which allowed the diameter of the object at a distance of 40.6 AU to be determined. It was much smaller than expected (143 km) based on previous assumptions (=< 210 km), and turns out to have an albedo of at least 0.88, i.e. almost a pure water ice reflective surface.
It's part of the Haumea collisional family, which is thought to have occured a billion years ago, so water ice should not exist on the surface. Mysteries! There are 10 members of the collision event in addition to Haumea itself (Including 2 moons Huamea I and II)

I don't know if IOTA lists these KBO events (which have huge path errors due to the extreme distance involved, but I suspect they will soon.

 

[kg]

The Stardust mission used internet volunteers to look through thousands of images of the areogel cells to find the microscopic pieces of comet debris embedded. From what I've read the Stardust folks were very pleased with the work of the volunteers. The results from the mission are quite interesting as well!

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.bbc.co.uk : Home computers discover rare star

13 August 2010 Last updated at 01:13 GMT

By putting their home computers to work when they would otherwise be idle, three "citizen scientists" have discovered a rare astronomical object.

The unusual find is called a "disrupted binary pulsar"; these pulsars can be created when a massive star collapses.

The discoverers, from the US and Germany found the object with the help of the Einstein@Home project.

The Einstein@Home screensaver shows the area of sky being processed

www.cbsnews.com : Neutron Star Discovery Aided by Home PCs

Aug. 12, 2010

(AP) Ordinary computers like those folks use to send e-mail or surf the Internet are being credited with finding a previously unknown neutron star.

Home office computers in Ames, Iowa, and Mainz, Germany, were cited Thursday in the discovery of fast-rotating pulsar called PSR J2007+2722.

It was the first scientific discovery for the project, known as Einstein(at)Home, that uses spare computer power donated by 250,000 volunteers in 192 countries, according to Bruce Allen, director of effort.

http://www.einsteinathome.org/

 

[EarthlingX]

news.discovery.com : Astronomy's Amateurs A Boon for Science

Analysis by Jennifer Ouellette

Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:37 AM ET

Back in 1994. a comet broke apart, slammed into Jupiter and created a visible scar that lasted for weeks. The comet's discovery was credited to one professional astronomer and two amateurs: Gene and Carol Shoemaker, and David Levy. Hence it became known as Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Since the earliest days of human history, mankind has scoured the heavens. The invention of the telescope in the late 16th century launched a hugely popular backyard hobby that has yielded its fair share of terrific discoveries -- made not by scientists, but by amateurs.

Amateur astronomers scored again this year by being the first to observe two asteroid impacts on Jupiter using high-speed video monitoring equipment: one on June 3, 2010 (image and video here), and another on Aug 20.

In the Philippines, Christopher Go was recording observations of Jupiter -- in prime viewing position the night of June 3 for backyard astronomers -- when he saw a two-second flash of light. Over in Australia, his fellow skywatcher Anthony Wesley saw the same thing while perusing some real-time video from his telescope.

...


SDC thread : 2010 Asteroid Impacts on Jupiter

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.planetary.org : I'm So Proud 2: Announcing AmateurSpaceImages.com

Oct. 5, 2010 | 13:48 PDT | 20:48 UTC

By Emily Lakdawalla

The first announcement I made today was the new partnership between the Planetary Society and UnmannedSpaceflight.com. The second is the launch of a new project that is near and dear to my heart: AmateurSpaceImages.com. It doesn't exist yet; we've registered the URL, but there's nothing there but a 1996-era index page with a couple of pictures. But I hope that in a few months, it will be much more: the online source for amateur-processed images from space missions. In order to do it, I need your help. And when I say "help," I mean "money."

...

 

[TheNavigator]

I've recently downloaded the software for Einstein@home. Just one small step each of us can do to assist in space science. If nothing else, it always astounds people who ask "what is that on your computer, dude?"

 

[EarthlingX]

This is not exactly for everyone like Einstein@home, just another example of power of the 'ordinary folks' :

http://www.physorg.com : Backyard astronomer in Ireland finds supernova

October 8, 2010

by Lin Edwards


Image: David Grennan/Astronomy forum.

(PhysOrg.com) -- An amateur astronomer working from his backyard shed in Ireland was the first in the world to spot a supernova explosion last month. The discovery is the biggest ever in amateur astronomy in Ireland.

Astronomer David Grennan and his wife Carol were about to turn in from their garden shed observatory in Raheny in Dublin on 17th September when they discovered a supernova. The explosion that caused the burst of light occurred an estimated 290 million years ago. The discovery was confirmed officially by International astronomers earlier this week.

Supernovae can outshine entire galaxies for a short time, and they are the major source of heavy elements in the Universe. They can occur when a large star — much bigger than our sun — accumulates material from a nearby star, becoming massive and unstable until the energy of nuclear fusion in its core is sufficient to cause a cataclysmic explosion destroying any nearby planets or suns. Another type of supernova collapses after losing material to its neighbors. After the explosion the star collapses inwards to produce a dense, cold remnant that may become a neutron star or a black hole.

Mr Grennan is a software developer by day, but at night he spends as much time as the Irish weather permits in his home-made observatory, which is a converted garden shed with a retractable roof. Grennan said he had been stargazing since he was about five years old, and had always been fascinated by the stars. He bought his first telescope in 1991, and has continually upgraded his equipment. In 2005 he built his home observatory using standard DIY parts. The observatory is equipped with a 14 inch Cassegrain telescope.

David's wife Carol analyzes the images he takes with his telescope and helps identify interesting objects. They discovered the supernova by comparing images of the galaxy UGC 112 taken in August and September. The signs were tiny, but David’s many years of experience helped him to spot them.

David said the discovery was the result of a year’s work, during which he surveyed 2,611 galaxies. He said it was “mind-boggling” to be the first to see something that happened almost 300 million years ago, and the time-lag “is on a scale almost as difficult to comprehend as Ireland’s astronomical debt.” Carol was even more excited than he was, and the two shared a bottle of champagne when the supernova was confirmed.

...