Our friends at the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO, which we blogged way back in 2004) have a newer project, Citizen Sky:
We are seeking to understand a star that has been a mystery to scientists for many years. This star is epsilon Aurigae, a very interesting, very bright star located in the [...]
The annual Great Backyard Bird Count is this weekend…don’t forget to report your birds! And you can RSVP for the event on Facebook.
Over the years, you’ll develop an interesting record of the birds seen in your yard on one weekend a month. Of course, if you’re interested in doing more than that, you [...]
Spacehack is a terrific new directory of projects where you can participate in space exploration and connect with the space community.
Spacehack categorizes projects as competition, data analysis, education, and open source. Some examples of projects include:
Astronaut Glove Challenge: “designed to promote the development of glove joint technology, resulting in a highly dexterous and flexible [...]
I work in the Maker Media Division of O’Reilly Media, and I did not work on this book. But I’m very proud to be a part of the organization that’s published Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders: From Novice to Master Observer. I just looked at a copy of it here in the office, [...]
I just found out about this, but there’s still just barely time to participate in this year’s GLOBE at Night project. The project runs for two more nights, through March 21, and asks observers to report which stars in the constellation Orion are visible from their location, in an effort to determine the extent [...]
The Wired News Article Star Hunting for the Rest of Us has some nice tidbits about Slooh, an online telescope service. Slooh lets you view objects on “group missions”, but members can also pay for solo missions to view specific items of interest. For $99.95 a year, you can get access to [...]
Another program through the AAVSO; the Solar Observer Program one collects sunspot obesrvation data from amateurs and compiles it for the American Relative Sunspot Numbers, distributed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), subscribing universities, scientific organizations, and interested individuals.
There’s also the related SID Program, where participants monitor very low frequency radio stations for [...]
Perhaps the granddaddy of modern citizen science, the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) “was founded in 1911 at Harvard College Observatory to coordinate variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers.” 300,000 observations are collected from members each year. See this page for more about the organization.
AAVSO manages several observation [...]
The International Meteor Organization (IMO) collects observation reports of sporadic meteors and meteor showers. Observations can be made visually, with photography, or with video recording. Cost to participate can be very little to just count meteors, or very high if you want play with some of the more advanced equipment. You [...]
