Tag: Citizen Science

More Than 36,000 Volunteers Helped Do NASA Eclipse Science

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2 Min Read More Than 36,000 Volunteers Helped Do NASA Eclipse Science SunSketcher volunteers captured sequences of eclipse images, revealing the precise size and shape of the Sun and testing theories of gravity! Credits: Clinton Lewis from New Harmony, IN/Western Kentucky University Thank you for helping us out! Over 36,000 people helped do NASA Science during Monday’s total solar eclipse. Together, these volunteers submitted more than 60,000 vital pieces of eclipse data to NASA science projects. More than 30,000 volunteers with the SunSketcher project pointed their smartphones toward the Sun and recorded…

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Sketch the Shape of the Sun for Science During the Solar Eclipse

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5 min read Sketch the Shape of the Sun for Science During the Solar Eclipse Calling all eclipse admirers! The SunSketcher team is looking for one million volunteers to capture photos on their cell phones during the April 8 total solar eclipse. These images will help scientists learn about the size, shape, and inner structure of the Sun. This NASA-funded citizen science project invites anyone who will be within the path of totality in the U.S. to take photos of the Baily’s Beads effect, which occurs when little points of…

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NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare “Active Asteroids”

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2 Min Read NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare “Active Asteroids” NASA’s Active Asteroids project Credits: Henry Hsieh Some extraordinary asteroids have “activity”—comet-like tails or envelopes of gas and dust.  NASA’s Active Asteroids project announced the discovery of activity on fifteen asteroids, challenging conventional wisdom about the solar system. To find these fifteen rare objects, more than 8000 volunteers combed through 430,000 images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile. A paper about the results, now published in the Astronomical Journal, includes nine volunteers…

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Earn Awards for Doing NASA Science with GLOBE Observer

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2 min read Earn Awards for Doing NASA Science with GLOBE Observer GLOBE Observer, the mobile app of the Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program , gives anyone who wants to (in 120+ GLOBE countries) the opportunity to do NASA science by making environmental observations that complement NASA satellite observations and help scientists study Earth and the global environment.  On March 6, 2024, the GLOBE Observer team released a new way to appreciate and celebrate volunteer contributions: My Achievements! This new section of the GLOBE Observer…

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For Your Processing Pleasure: The Sharpest Pictures of Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon Io in a Generation

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1 min read For Your Processing Pleasure: The Sharpest Pictures of Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon Io in a Generation Jupiter’s moon Io, its night side illuminated by reflected sunlight from Jupiter, or “Jupitershine.” Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Emma Wälimäki © CC BY NASA’s Juno spacecraft just made the closest flybys of Jupiter’s moon Io that any spacecraft has carried out in more than 20 years. An instrument on this spacecraft called “JunoCam” returned spectacular, high-resolution images—and raw data are now available for you to process, enhance, and investigate. On Dec. 30th, 2023, Juno…

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UNITE All-Nighter Delights Amateur Astronomers

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2 min read UNITE All-Nighter Delights Amateur Astronomers Fadi Saibi and his daughter Sophie, age 14, pose for a photograph with their Unistellar telescope in their backyard in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. Credit: Bay Area News Group/Nhat V. Meye Maybe you read about them in the papers–amateur astronomers in Japan, Russia, France, Finland, and the United States have been pulling all-nighters to spot extraordinary exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun.  NASA’s UNITE project holds these planetary stakeouts several times every month, and you can join in!…

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Growing Beyond Earth High School Student Wins the American Society of Gravitational Space Research Scholarship

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1 min read Growing Beyond Earth High School Student Wins the American Society of Gravitational Space Research Scholarship Growing Beyond Earth is a 6th-12th grade classroom-based citizen science project developed by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in partnership with scientists at NASA, designed to advance NASA research on growing plants in space. It includes a series of plant experiments conducted by students in a Fairchild-designed plant habitat similar to the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) on the International Space Station. On November 18th, 2023, South Florida High School student, Leonardo Ravelo, was…

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International Colloquium on Space and Sustainability in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

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2 min read International Colloquium on Space and Sustainability in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico Members of NASA Science Activation’s NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) were recently invited to present and participate as part of a space and citizen science panel session at the International Colloquium on Space and Sustainability, held at the Ciudad Creativa Digital’s Plataforma Abierta de Innovación in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. The Colloquium, held November 13 to 16, 2023, is a collaboration with NASA to foster discussion in Mexico about the current state of the use of Earth…

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New Patterns in Mars’s Clouds Revealed by Volunteers

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2 min read New Patterns in Mars’s Clouds Revealed by Volunteers Volunteers found that clouds in Mars’s atmosphere cluster at certain latitudes and altitudes. White patches in this pair of plots shows where Cloudspotting participants spotted the most clouds (or “arch peaks” in the project lingo). Red labels highlight a few interesting regions: 1) where high-altitude Carbon Dioxide-ice clouds form; 2) water-ice clouds that show a different pattern between day and night; and 3) clouds that form in a cold region over the poles. Credit: Adapted from Slipski et al.…

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Daily Minor Planet Volunteers Spot an Asteroid Passing Close to Earth

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2 min read Daily Minor Planet Volunteers Spot an Asteroid Passing Close to Earth The Catalina Sky Survey telescope “G96” with the follow-up telescope “I52” in the background. Credit: David Rankin Volunteers working with The Daily Minor Planet have made the project’s first big discovery: an asteroid passing very near planet Earth. On the night of October 3rd, a telescope for the Catalina Sky Survey snapped four pictures of a far northern section of the sky. The next day, volunteers  H. N. DiRuscio, X. Liao, V. Gonano and E. Chaghafi spotted a clear…

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