The Milky Way Project has now passed one million classifications since its relaunch a few months ago. The project is currently 75% complete, meaning there are still many, many images left to classify. Which is fine because in fact the project has become truly international lately – with citizen scientists around the world now able to participate in English, Spanish, German, French, Indonesian, Polish and Danish. There are more languages on the way too!
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The Kepler Observatory was severely crippled last year due to the failure of a reaction wheel needed to maintain the pointing precision of the space telescope. The Kepler K2 recovery plan will return the observatory to planet finding by taking advantage of solar radiation pressure to maintain the pointing alignment.
There’s a good chance, but no guarantee, of a strong meteor shower tonight over North America. The May Camelopardalids come from the dust debris trail of the periodic comet 209P/LINEAR, a little known and not very bright comet discovered in 2004 that orbits the sun every 5.1 years. According to Sky & Telescope:
What’s got dynamicists excited, however, is that Earth might might plow right through relatively dense strands of debris shed by the comet long ago. This should create a strong burst of “shooting stars” on May 24th.
Several predictions suggest you might see anywhere from 100 to 200 meteors per hour from a dark location free of light pollution. That means you could perhaps see one or two meteors per minute. Some (but not all) dynamicists think there’s even an outside chance that the celestial spectacle could briefly become a meteor “storm,” with more than 1,000 arriving per hour! (But it’s also possible that the display might be weak, with just a few dozen meteors visible per hour even in a dark sky.)
The meteor shower should peak around 3 am EDT. If you don’t have a clear sky, you can watch online at Slooh.
As part of the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, NASA is partnering with private internet technology company Slooh to engage citizen scientists in the effort to track and characterize near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) that are potentially hazardous to human populations.
Slooh’s global network of web-connected telescopes will be available for use by amateur astronomers for monitoring and characterizing NEOs. Citizen scientists without access to professional equipment will have the opportunity to be a part of the global challenge to find hazardous NEOs. NASA also is partnering with Slooh on live astronomy events.
“We are excited by the opportunity to tap into Slooh’s network of amateur astronomers, who are already producing scientific papers with their work,” said Jason Kessler, program executive for the Asteroid Grand Challenge. “We look forward to expanding the meaningful science the Slooh network can provide in support of the grand challenge.”
The live astronomy events on which NASA and Slooh will partner include the LINEAR comet meteor shower, occurring Friday, May 23, and Saturday, May 24. Slooh will provide live feeds of the event from 6 p.m. EDT Friday to 3 a.m. Saturday on the company’s website and the UStream feed for NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, at:
Live astronomy events through the NASA and Slooh platforms increase the number of people who can watch and actively participate in science as it happens. Future events will include NASA experts offering commentary on live events. Slooh plans to provide NASA with relevant observation data from these events, which may be used for grand challenge citizen science efforts.
“This partnership is a great validation of our approach to engage the public in the exploration of space,” says Michael Paolucci, founder and CEO of Slooh. “NASA understands the importance of citizen science and knows a good way to get amateur astronomers involved is to offer them ways to do productive astronomy. Slooh does that by giving them remote access to great telescopes situated at leading observatory sites around the world.”
The Asteroid Grand Challenge is built on such collaborative efforts. The partnership with Slooh augments grand challenge partnerships with SpaceGambit and Planetary Resources Inc., and extending the search from existing data to direct observation through telescopes.
Through NASA’s asteroid initiative, the agency seeks to enhance its ongoing work in the identification and characterization of near-Earth objects for further scientific investigation. This work includes locating potentially hazardous asteroids and identifying those viable for redirection to a stable lunar orbit for future exploration by astronauts. The Asteroid Grand Challenge, one part of the asteroid initiative, expands the agency’s efforts beyond traditional boundaries and encourages partnerships and collaboration with a variety of organizations.
The two new resource guides are designed specifically for instructors and students in introductory college science courses (such as Astro 101), but can be used by anyone who is teaching, explaining, or learning astronomy or earth and space science. Sponsored by the Heliophysics Forum of the Space Missions Directorate at NASA, the guides include written, on-line, and audio-visual materials, many of which can be used directly in the classroom, for student papers, or personal enrichment.
“Unheard Voices 1: The Astronomy of Many Cultures” features the contributions to astronomy of African, Asian, Hispanic, South Pacific, Islamic, and Native American cultures, together with a section on reports and articles for achieving greater diversity in science. (15 pages)
“Unheard Voices 2: Women in Astronomy” features sections on: the history of women in astronomy in general, materials on selected women astronomers of the past, issues facing women in astronomy today, and materials on selected contemporary women astronomers. (13 pages)
Multiverse — formerly known as the Center for Science Education at the University of California, Berkeley — offers a website with a wide range of resources, information, and programs, to help educators and their students learn about the universe in a more multi-cultural context.
