Citizen Science Archives

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Matt Williams

Remember that “Alien Signal” Sent by the ExoMars Orbiter Last Year? It’s Just Been Decoded

The Sign in Space message has finally been decoded. Credit: A Sign in Space

In May 2023, the ESA’s Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), currently in orbit around Mars, sent a signal to Earth to simulate a possible extraterrestrial transmission. As part of the multidisciplinary art project “A Sign in Space,” the purpose was to engage citizen scientists in helping to decode it. The campaign was inspired by Cosmicomics by Italian writer/journalist Italo Calvino, a series of short stories exploring various scientific principles. The project is partnered with the SETI Institute, the Green Bank Observatory, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF).

After three radio astronomy observatories on Earth intercepted the message, the challenge was to extract the message from the raw data of the radio signal and then decode it. After ten days, more than 5000 citizen scientists worldwide gathered online and used their combined resources to extract the signal. After a year of attempts, two U.S. citizens – the father-daughter team of Ken and Keli Chaffin – managed to crack the code after days of simulations. They discovered that the message consisted of five clusters of white dots and lattices against a black background, suggesting cellular formation and life!

March 19, 2024March 19, 2024 by Evan Gough

Citizen Scientists Find Fifteen “Active Asteroids”

Citizen Scientists working on NASA's Active Asteroids Project have discovered 15 active asteroids and one Centaur. But it required 8,000 people poring over 430,000 images to find them. Image Credit: Henry Hsieh

Nature often defies our simple explanations. Take comets and asteroids, for example. Comets are icy and have tails; asteroids are rocky and don’t have tails. But it might not be quite so simple, according to new research.

December 11, 2023December 11, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Amateur Astronomers Found Planets Crashing Into Each Other

Artist impression of two colliding planets.

Astronomy is one of the sciences where amateurs make regular contributions. Over the years, members of the public have made exciting discoveries and meaningful contributions to the scientific process, either through direct observing, citizen science projects, or through combing through open data from the various space missions.

Recently, amateur astronomer Arttu Sainio saw a conversation on X (Twitter) where researchers were discussing the strange behavior of a dimming sun-like star. Intrigued, Arttu decided to look at the data on this star, called Asassn-21qj, on his own. Looking at archival data from NASA’s NEOWISE mission, Sainio was surprised to find that the star had dimmed before, with an unexpected brightening in infrared light two years before the optical dimming event. So, he joined the discussion on social media and shared his finding – which led to more amateurs joining the research, which lead to an incredible discovery.

September 29, 2023September 29, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Want to Safely Watch the Sun With a Large Group? Get a Disco Ball

Projections of the Sun from a disco ball on the walls of a university observatory. Image via Cumming et al.

The upcoming solar eclipses and the current high sunspot activity means it’s a great time to observe the Sun. Eclipses also mean that large groups of people will be together to view these events. However, rule #1 for astronomy is to never look at the Sun with unprotected eyes, especially with a telescope or binoculars.

So, how can you safely show the changing Sun to a large group of people without having them line up forever to look through a telescope with a solar filter, or having a lot of equipment?

A group of astronomers have a solution: Get a disco ball.

February 11, 2023February 11, 2023 by Matt Williams

Humans Can Still Find Galaxies That Machine Learning Algorithms Miss

Right in the middle of this image lies the newly discovered dwarf galaxy known as Donatiello II, one of three newly discovered galaxies Credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA/B. Mutlu-Pakdil; Acknowledgement: G. Donatiello

The age of big data is upon us, and there are scarcely any fields of scientific research that are not affected. Take astronomy, for example. Thanks to cutting-edge instruments, software, and data-sharing, observatories worldwide are accumulating hundreds of terabytes in a single day and between 100 to 200 Petabytes a year. Once next-generation telescopes become operational, astronomy will likely enter the “exabyte era,” where 10¹⁸ bytes (one quintillion) of data are obtained annually. To keep up with this volume, astronomers are turning to machine learning and AI to handle the job of analysis.

While AI plays a growing role in data analysis, there are some instances where citizen astronomers are proving more capable. While examining data collected by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), amateur astronomer Giuseppe Donatiello discovered three faint galaxies that a machine-learning algorithm had apparently missed. These galaxies, all satellites of the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253), are now named Donatello II, III, and IV, in his honor. In this day of data-driven research, it’s good to know that sometimes there’s no substitute for human eyeballs and intellect.

January 14, 2023January 14, 2023 by Matt Williams

NASA’s Exoplanet Watch Wants Your Help Studying Planets Around Other Stars

NASA's Exoplanet Watch allows citizen scientists to participate in exoplanet research. Credit: NASA

It’s no secret that the study of extrasolar planets has exploded since the turn of the century. Whereas astronomers knew less than a dozen exoplanets twenty years ago, thousands of candidates are available for study today. In fact, as of January 13th, 2023, a total of 5,241 planets have been confirmed in 3,916 star systems, with another 9,169 candidates awaiting confirmation. While opportunities for exoplanet research have grown exponentially, so too has the arduous task of sorting through the massive amounts of data involved.

Hence why astronomers, universities, research institutes, and space agencies have come to rely on citizen scientists in recent years. With the help of online resources, data-sharing, and networking, skilled amateurs can lend their time, energy, and resources to the hunt for planets beyond our Solar System. In recognition of their importance, NASA has launched Exoplanet Watch, a citizen science project sponsored by NASA’s Universe of Learning. This project lets regular people learn about exoplanets and get involved in the discovery and characterization process.

September 21, 2022September 21, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomy For Equity: Building Hope Through the Night Sky

Roaya Astronomical Clubs in Libyan Schools is a project of Roaya for Astronomy and Space Applications, a Libyan youth group created in 2012 that became a government-recognized Non-Governmental Foundation in 2021. The project is supported through partnerships with the Libya Ministry of Education. Image courtesy of A4E.

Have you ever attended a star party, where amateur astronomers set up telescopes and invite the public to take a look at the night sky? If so, then you understand and appreciate how much these part-time but incredibly enthusiastic stargazers love to share the wonders of our Universe with others.

That type of passion and generosity of heart is the basis of a new organization that hopes to harness the proven capability of astronomy to bring hope, wonder and science to marginalized and isolated students and communities around the world.

Astronomy For Equity (A4E) looks to bring together existing resources within communities in war-torn or developing countries, and provide the tools and resources to support experienced volunteers and teachers for public education programs that are already in place. Their first initiative will help get telescopes to astronomy students in Libya.

September 13, 2022September 13, 2022 by Seth Lockman

Alien Artifacts Could Be Hidden Across the Solar System. Here’s how we Could Search for Them.

Galileo Project members (from left: Carson Ezell, Ezra Kelderman, Abby White, Alex and Lily Delacroix) with the audio tower (left), radar spectrum tower (middle) and radar imaging tower (right) behind them on the roof of the Harvard College Observatory. Image credit: The Galileo Project

Do aliens exist? Almost certainly. The universe is vast and ancient, and our corner of it is not particularly special. If life emerged here, it probably did elsewhere. Keep in mind this is a super broad assumption. A single instance of fossilized archaebacteria-like organisms five superclusters away would be all it takes to say, “Yes, there are aliens!” …if we could find them somehow.

September 13, 2022September 13, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Galactic Photobombing

These two spiral galaxies appear to be colliding, but are only overlapping from our vantage point at Earth. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel/Galaxy Zoo.

This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, appears to show two spiral galaxies colliding. In fact, they are just overlapping from our vantage point and are likely quite distant from each other. The galaxies are named SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, and they lie more than a billion light-years from Earth. This ‘photobombing’ of one galaxy getting in the same picture as another was originally found by volunteers from the Galaxy Zoo project, which uses the power of crowdsourcing to find unusual galaxies in our Universe.

July 31, 2022July 31, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Even Citizen Scientists are Getting Time on JWST

This artist’s illustration shows a dim, cold brown dwarf in space. Brown dwarfs form like stars, but do not have enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion in their cores – the process that causes stars to burn. As a result they share some physical characteristics with massive planets, like Jupiter. Credits: IPAC/Caltech

Over the years, members of the public have regularly made exciting discoveries and meaningful contributions to the scientific process through citizen science projects. These citizen scientists sometimes mine large datasets for cosmic treasures, uncovering unknown objects such as Hanny’s Voorwerp, or other times bring an unusual phenomenon to scientists’ attention, such as the discovery of the new aurora-like spectacle called STEVE. Whatever the project, the advent of citizen science projects has changed the nature of scientific engagement between the public and the scientific community.

Now, unusual brown dwarf stars discovered by citizen scientists will be observed by the James Webb Space Telescope, with the hopes of learning more about these rare objects. Excitingly, one of the citizen scientists has been named as a co-investigator on a winning Webb proposal.