Citizen Science Salon is a partnership between Discover and SciStarter.org.
As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, it’s prime stargazing time. To celebrate, we’re featuring citizen science projects ideal for the astronomically-inclined, both those who love going out into the cool night air and those who prefer exploring from the comfort of their easy chairs. Either way, the cosmos await!
Backyard Worlds: Planet Nine
This artist’s concept shows the hypothetical super-Earth known as Planet Nine or Planet X, which some researchers think lurks far beyond Pluto in the outer reaches of the solar system. (Credit: R. Hurt/IPAC/Caltech)
What mysteries await in the outer reaches of our solar system, beyond Neptune? Undiscovered planets? Dwarf stars? Swarms of lost socks? Scientists need your help to find out! You’ll run your eyeballs over telescope images to spot potential new discoveries.
Satellite Streak Watcher
Telescopes at Lowell Observatory in Arizona captured this image of galaxies on May 25, their images marred by the reflected light from more than 25 Starlink satellites as they passed overhead. (Credit: Victoria Girgis/Lowell Observatory)
You and your cell phone can help NASA scientists by photographing the paths of satellites in Earth orbit. These spacecraft are accumulating and cluttering things up for scientists trying to see into space. Your contributions will help them track this growing problem.
Onward Into the Tomatosphere!
The Tomatosphere project sends seeds to orbit and returns them for kids to grow back on Earth. (Credit: NASA)
If you take some tomato seeds, expose them to the conditions of outer space, and then plant them, what will happen? With Tomatosphere, it’s your job to find out! The project staff provides the treated seeds, and you grow them, make observations and collect data. Tomatosphere is available to students in grades 3 through 10 in the US and Canada.
Target Asteroids!
(Credit: Dotted Yeti/Shutterstock)
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made news recently by visiting asteroid Bennu. Now they’re looking for more asteroid travel destinations and, if you have an 8″ or larger telescope and a CCD camera, you can help. There are over a million asteroids with a diameter of more than 1 km, and by joining Target Asteroids!, you’ll check them out and help NASA plan future missions.
Spiral Graph
Spiral Graph asks users to trace out the shape of a spiral galaxy’s arms, helping give astronomers a potential proxy for studying a number of other properties. That may include things like a supermassive black hole’s size and the overall mass of a galaxy’s dark matter and stars. (Credit: Spiral Graph/NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
Even if you can barely identify the Big Dipper, your amazing human brain can ID properties of galaxies that baffle even the most powerful computers. That’s why the Spiral Graph Project needs your help. You’ll measure how tightly wrapped spiral arms are in galaxies and identify interesting candidates for future, detailed telescope observations.
Globe at Night
The Globe at Night project invites citizen scientists to record light pollution in their own community. (Credit: DMSP/NASA)
If you can go outside at night and look up, you have what it takes to participate in Globe at Night, a project that’s monitoring light pollution. Your job is to count all the stars you can see in various constellations. Send that info, plus your location, and the Globe at Night researchers will compare what you saw with what you should be able to see.
You can find more citizen science projects at SciStarter.org.
