Hey everyone!
I’m forming a team for a citizen science project called IASC — International Astronomical Search Collaboration and I’m looking for teammates! Interested?
It’s nothing too crazy and the process can be underwhelming. I’ll say that just so you don’t expect anything extraordinary.
Basically, what we’d have to do is analyse images that will be sent to us from these two observatories in Hawaii called Pan-STARRS 1 and 2. And we’d have to look for moving possibily unidentified objects and send an report to IASC (the organization behind it).
It’s super quick and simple, and it really shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes per pack out of your day and you’ll have an entire month to sort through the packs. So, time really isn’t an issue and you can do things on your own time.
This is a great way to be part of hands-on science. You’re helping scientists track objects and identify new ones. This is very relevant, especially on a planetary defense level. You can’t protect yourself from a threat you don’t see coming.
They offer certificates to all participants, and the certificates are pretty neat.
Requirements/preferences:
- Willing to commit some time to analyzing telescope images
- Preferably located in the Americas, Europe, or Africa (similar time zones are a plus)
Relevant links: https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/international-astronomical-search-collaboration/ http://iasc.cosmosearch.org/
If you want in or have questions, lmk below :)
(Sorry if this isn’t allowed mods. I couldn’t find anything that said I couldn’t do this in the rules T-T)
Hell yeah, I could install astrometrica through bottles as well, so you can count me in 🥳
Great news! Reaching out to you in your DMs right away.
Hi, I’m interested but before I’ll commit I have a doubt: you say it’ll take 20 minutes per pack but how many packs will get for the month?
Each campaign lasts around a month, and the amount of packs per team can vary; I’ve seen 15 packs at the lowest and 25 at the highest. How many packs each team member will get will depend on how many members there are and how many we get. So, If there are 5 members, and 25 packs, it’d be logical for each member to get 5 packs to analyse that month.
Ok that’s not much, count me in
I’ll dm you
If one of the requirements is to run windows that leaves me out.
I always found it fascinating when fedora has exteremtly niche spins like astronomy spin (https://fedoraproject.org/labs/astronomy).
I didn’t know about that!
I was able to install it through Bottles as a “productivity app” and it worked right out of the box (Fedora 43). Haven’t 100% function checked it yet, but so far so good.
The program we use is called “Astrometrica”. It is Windows only in theory, but you could run it using Wine. Though, I haven’t had much success in doing that.
If you’d like to try, I could help you out!
Maybe using proton like if it was a game.
That could work. There’s a guy in our group that uses Fedora and manged to get it running. So I’m guessing it’s possible and easy to do.
I’d like to join/help. Dm me the discord.
And for anyone wondering, I was able to get the app working in linux pretty easily (installed via Bottles as a “productivity app”).
Edit: they updated the app. Still trying to get that running.
Of course! DMimg you right up!
I would like to help. Please put me on the list.
That’s awesome! How can I reach out to you?
We’ve made a Discord server for our team, but if you don’t have it that is completely okay.
Dm me the discord link and I’ll jump on
Awesome!
If anyone else wants to join, let me know and I’ll send the link.
Can I get a link too? I already participate on BOINC
Hi, I’m also interested!
Awesome. Sending you our Discord in your DM!
Hi. Interested, could you send the the invite link, please.
Awesome. Shooting you a DM
Yes, please. I was just thinking about looking for a new citizen science thing to do over the winter and this falls in my lap. Please DM the discord link to me as well.
That’s great timing then. Check you DMs
I have my blaze orange what kind of rifle guarantees a kill shot on an asteroid?
A Falcon 9 does a pretty good job.
Lol
Any idea on when the campaign begins? I would love to help, but January is completely blocked up for me by various stuff. February would be optimal for me.
It’s hard to know, but I guess February/March. They happen pretty much every month, but there’s a quota for each and the January one is full.
Awesome! I’ll give it a look in February then
Great!
If you want to be a part of my team, however, we’ll need to submit our team form this month.
Thank you!, but I’ll have to decline because my life is anything but stable right now. Very likely something might come up during January and make me drop out after I had already registered. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll be able to assemble my own team for February no problem.
Love it. However, I feel that it should be possible to automate the procedure: Grab images, sort them, and compare them to find any moving objects. Then somehow look them up to check whether it’s already registered.
Sounds like a reasonably simple script wrapped around curl, some gfx library calls, and possibly selenium or WWW::Mechanize
Automated software has a threshold for signal-to-noise ratio to avoid false positives. Human eyes (us hunters) are much better at spotting faint moving objects that dip below the threshold of the automated pipelines! :)
I have a feeling that this human step might be at the end of a chain of automated filters.
