Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomy, Space participation, Space Science, The Moon

Citizen science – recent activity at four projects

I often talk here about the proliferation of citizen science projects. I thought I would scan the blogs of four space related projects at Zooniverse and see what their blogs are talking about these days.

* Planet Hunters –  In this project, participants scan data from the Kepler  space observatory to look for a drop in the brightness of a star when a planet orbits in front of it as seen from our point of view.

What factors impact transit shape – Planet Hunters blog – This post discusses an effort to make simulated transits look more like the real ones.

2012_Transit_of_Venus_from_SFTransit of Venus – Image credit Wikipedia

* Galaxy Zoo – With millions of galaxies to classify, this project takes advantage of the human powers of pattern recognition and lets participants decide into which category a galaxy should go according to its shape and features.

Spiral Galaxies and the Future of Citizen Science: a Live Chat – Galaxy Zoo blog – An online chat show brings “Some of the Galaxy Zoo Science Team” together to “talk about a recent paper on measuring spiral arm features via a computer algorithm, including how it compares to human classifications and what this means for the future of volunteer-driven citizen science.” The “also introduce — and have a bit of fun with — the jargon gong.”

* Moon Zoo – With the thousands of images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, participants classify the myriad types of lunar surface features.

Flying over Taurus-Littrow – Moon Zoo blog – This post points to dramatically lit images of the Taurus-Littrow site where Apollo 17 landed.

Taurus-Littrow

 

* Planet Four – In this project, participants help “find and mark ‘fans’ and ‘blotches’ on the Martian surface. Scientists believe that these features indicate wind direction and speed. By tracking ‘fans’ and ‘blotches’ over the course of several Martian years to see how they form, evolve, disappear and reform, we can help planetary scientists better understand Mars’ climate.”

to the North! – Planet Four Blog –  The project currently only has image data for the Martian southern hemisphere but they will eventually get northern imagery. A JPL video discusses the features in the north that the project wants to investigate

Astronomy

Kepler planet hunter back in action

The Kepler orbital observatory is back to planet hunting after taking ten days off to give one of its reaction wheels, which had been showing signs of abnormal friction, some days off  (see earlier post here) : Kepler resumes data collection after safe mode – Spaceflight Now

Managers put Kepler into safe mode Jan. 17 when reaction wheel no. 4, one of the spacecraft’s three remaining reaction wheels, showed rising friction. The reaction wheels were spun down and the observatory switched to chemical rocket thrusters to control its attitude for a 10-day “wheel rest” period.

The wheel rest period was designed to allow the wheel bearings to cool and lubricant to redistribute inside the wheel housings, hopefully resolving the friction issue.

[…]

Engineers will review the performance of wheel no. 4 over the next month to evaluate the effectiveness of the wheel rest scheme, NASA said in an update. More wheel rest periods may be needed in the future if the procedure proves effective, according to Sobeck.

Astronomy

Amateur astronomers: Discovering a multi-planet system + Awards for comet discoveries

Some news of amateur astronomy accomplishments:

Here is a story about amateur astronomers using the sophisticated technique of microlensing to  discover a multiple-planet system.

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The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics award a total purse of $30,000 to amateur astronomers who discovered comets in 2012:

Nearly all comet discoveries nowadays are made by automated telescopes which scan the skies with robotic eyes and check new appearances in a computer. But the Edgar Wilson Award celebrates the few lone amateurs that still practice the old ways of comet watching, scanning the skies during freezing cold nights to get that once-in-a-lifetime finding. Spotting comets is very competitive because the first person to report it gets the honor of having the comet named for him or herself.

The five winners this year all made their discoveries in 2011. For most of the recipients, it is their first time winning. The prize money was split evenly among the discoveries.

Astronomy, Space Science

Asteroid 2012-DA14 to pass earth closer than GEO-sats

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NASA’s ScienceCast program reports on the upcoming close fly-by of asteroid 2012-DA14:

On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth closer than many man-made satellites. Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, astronomers have never seen an object so big come so close to our planet.

More at Near-Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14 to make extremely close approach in February 2013 – The Watchers – Aug.22.12.