Get Your Own Unprecedented 3-D View of the Moon

This AIPP image is a 1000-by-666-pixel section of the full-resolution 3-D map that Jeffrey Ambrozia will create, which will be a 5398-by-7000-pixel graphic. This shows Heinsius crater. Image courtesy Jeffrey Ambroziak.

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Love 3-D images? Interested in maps? Want to explore the Moon? Then a new Kickstarter project may be just what you are looking for. Jeffrey Ambroziak, creator of a specialized 3-D map projection method, will be producing what he calls the first true 3-D map of the Moon, and he is offering space enthusiasts the chance to get either digital or paper copies of the map, created from recently released data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Interest in the project has skyrocketed, and while the goal of $5,000 has already been reached by more than double that amount, Ambroziak is now thinking of what more he can offer to backers of his PopView 3D Moon Map.

“We’re at a place now where you can do some interesting research on your own, and it doesn’t necessarily require a large institution,” Ambroziak said by phone. “I love the idea of using Kickstarter to give interested and passionate space aficionados the opportunity to work with us.”

The maps will include not only 3-D views of the Moon’s surface, but on the “front side” will be “National Geographic-style” graphics and information.

Ambroziak said the backers who fund his project will be instrumental choosing the mapping locations and the information that is included.

“This will be very a very collaborative effort to pick the things we will put on the front of the map and the areas that we actually map in 3-D,” he told Universe Today. “As the Kickstarter project description makes clear, we are going to leverage the knowledge of all involved to produce a map that is as informative as it is innovative while letting everyone experience our excitement as the project takes shape. And in the end, everyone gets a copy of the map!”

Ambroziak added, “In the current age with NASA’s budget cuts and the space agency looking towards private enterprise more, there is now a place for interested people to create very interesting and useful space products. We spend billions of dollars to gather incredibly beautiful data of the Moon and Mars and much of it just sits around. We are looking to do our part to bring this data to life, and I’m proof of that you don’t have to sit around and wait for NASA to make an image from LROC data. We don’t have to wait anymore, we can do it ourselves.”

Ambroziak has been overwhelmed that his project is so popular. “I love the idea of the feedback that I’m getting already from people who are so excited about this project,” he said. Most gratifying was a top level pledge of $1,200 from former astronaut and shuttle pilot William Readdy, pledged $1200 to the project who wished Ambroziak “godspeed” in the effort. “It’s pretty neat when astronauts see the importance of what is being attempted,” Ambroziak said.

His patented Ambroziak Infinite Perspective Projection (AIPP) is a map projection method used for three-dimensional stereo visualization of geographic data, which allows viewers to see precise representation of data in 3-D, no matter what angle or distance the image is being viewed. He detailed the method in his book, Infinite Perspectives: Two Thousand Years of Three-Dimensional Mapmaking, (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999) and has previously created 3-D maps of Antarctica and Mars, which have been displayed at museums such as the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

I asked Ambroziak how far along he was with the project.

“I have downloaded all of the LROC imagery and digital elevation information,” he said. “I have further processed the image data to stretch out the contrast, computed shadows from the digital elevation model, and mixed the computed shadows back into the imagery to improve appearances. AIPP is then applied as desired to create 3D images. Specifically, imagery and digital elevation data is combined in accordance with a few chosen AIPP parameters (vertical exaggeration, view plane elevation, etc.) to produce the AIPP map.”

But that is only the technical part of the project, as the “front side” of the maps will be more artistic.

“I will be able to poll the backers for their preferred area of interest,” he said. “In short, you back the project, you have a say in the mapping of the Moon! Ultimately, I would like to perform a systematic mapping of the entire surface of the Moon in accordance with the USGS quad-map nomenclature and format. This is just the first step. This is Kickstarter – not start and then end.”

Check out the Kickstarter page for the “prizes” or incentives are for the various levels of funding. They range from getting a digital copy emailed to you, to complete posters, to an invitation to dinner for you and a guest with the Ambroziak, with food and drinks on him.

CosmoQuest: Taking Citizen Science to the Next Level

“X” marks the spot for a new place for Citizen Science on the web. It’s called CosmoQuest and the collaborators of this new website invite you to come visit and do more than just click your mouse. Besides contributing to real science for NASA space missions, there are also places to learn, converse, hang out and socialize.

“We’re building a community that recreates an academic and research facility,” said Pamela Gay, from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, who is familiar to listeners of Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy, and readers of her blog StarStryder. “We’ll be doing open science in an open-source way.”

Universe Today is one of the partners for CosmoQuest, along with Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy and the BAUT Forum (Bad Astronomy Universe Today forum) that Fraser Cain and Phil created for online discussion.

“Fraser and Phil successfully built a community within the BAUT Forum, and we see many of the same people there that are subscribers to our podcasts,” said Pamela. “One of the ideas behind CosmoQuest was to see if we could take this community of people that are interested in content and transform them into a community of people who are not just reading about or listening to astronomy and commenting on our feeds, but are also actively engaged in doing astronomy and science and want to learn more.”

Our readers have probably noticed –and hopefully participated in or watched — the new Weekly Space Hangouts that cover the news of the week, and the live telescope feeds that Fraser has been doing with amateur astronomers from around the world. This is all stems from CosmoQuest, and the CosmoQuest website will be the place where you can find all the feeds for the Hangouts and livestream star parties, and soon you’ll be able to sign up to get email notifications of these upcoming events. There will also be podcast feeds, a blog, an events calendar, and a forum. Later, there will be free (and premium) online classes, lectures, and other ways to participate and learn more about astronomy.

“We’ve got amateur astronomers out there who are doing amazing observations with their telescopes,” Fraser said. “We’ll be able to share tips and observing techniques, as well as exposing more people to the night sky. There will also be talks by scientists and experts in the field. In a way, this will be a way for those interested in astronomy to participate and learn without having to pay $1,000 a credit to get an advanced degree.”

But Citizen Science is the major part of CosmoQuest. “We know that the general public who are interested in science can contribute to science in meaningful ways,” said Pamela. “We’re building tools to bring researchers together with the public.”

CosmoQuest’s first project, which is currently in beta, is called Moon Mappers, which uses data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Screenshot from the Moon Mappers tutorial

“Right now in beta, we have full functionality of two interface tasks,” said Stuart Robbins from the University of Colorado Boulder, a co-lead for the Moon Mappers science team. “There are ‘Simply Craters’ and ‘Man vs. Machine.’ In the former, users are asked to draw a circle to trace out a crater. They click in the center of the crater, drag outwards, and release. They can also flag features that they think are interesting to point out to the science team. Man vs. Machine is the same thing, except I’ve run an automated crater detection algorithm to find craters in the image already. We ask users to correct ones it got wrong, remove ones it marked as craters that aren’t, and add craters it missed. We’re trying to study a few things with that interface, including whether it saves time and how we can improve our algorithms.”

The goal of Moon Mappers is to find the most effective and accurate way to map the Moon.

“Do we have people do it all by themselves? Do we have people modify the outputs of crater-finding algorithms (which we know are only accurate to 80% or better)? Under what lighting conditions are both humans and software most accurate in what they do?” Pamela said. “We’re looking at how we can most effectively map the Moon as quickly as possible through a combination of humans and computers using NASA imagery from LRO.”

In beta, they want to find any problems with the interface.

“What we really need are people who don’t know the project to come in and actually use it and point out what we may have missed in terms of functionality, bugs, or other things,” said Stuart. “For example, when we first went live on January 9, there was a user in the Forum discussion, Justin (“Briliu”) who made several interface change suggestions. We’ve made them all.”

They also want to make sure that the tutorials to train the Citizen Scientists works well, which will help in creating future programs, which will include data from the Dawn mission, MESSENGER, and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Pamela and Stuart both have ample experience in leading Citizen Science projects, as Pamela has been with the Zooniverse project for several years, specifically Moon Zoo, as has Stuart.

“One of the advantages of Moon Mappers is that because we are a much smaller and more open community we are willing to say yes to almost anything that we have the ability to construct,” said Pamela. “One of our biggest differences from Zooniverse is our intent to go open source with all of our code. This means that in those instances when we can’t help someone, we can say. ‘here is our code, we’ll help you get started.'”

CosmoQuest has already posted the code for their Google Hangout On Air + Twitter social media mashup.

Pamela added that CosmoQuest will differentiate itself by stressing community-building and learning.

Community partners for CosmoQuest include The Planetary Society, Astronomers Without Borders, the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics and educational partners are the Ward Bleecher Planetarium, Swinburne Astronomy Online and the Galileo Teacher Training Program.

Check out CosmoQuest and Moon Mappers.

Galaxy Zoo Reveals Curious ‘Violin Clef’ Quadruple Galaxy Merger

Shown at lower right is the "Violin Clef" galaxy merger. Click for larger image. Credit SDSS

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About a month ago, a Galaxy Zoo contributor named Bruno discovered a very unique galaxy merger in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The merger appeared to be a triple, or possibly quadruple system, which are indeed quite rare, and it includes curiously thin and long tidal tails. The Galaxy Zoo team has been informally referring to this merger as the “Violin Clef” or the “Integral” based on the unique shape as shown above.

What about this merger make it so interesting to scientists? What can they learn from these type of galaxy mergers?

Galaxy Zoo contributor Bruno had some insights on what makes the merger so interesting, stating: “These are some really beautiful tidal tails – They are extremely long and thin and appear curiously poor in terms of star formation, which is odd since mergers do tend to trigger star formation.” Bruno also added at the time of discovery: “There is no spectrum so we do not know the redshift of the object. It is also not clear if the objects at either end are associated or just a projection.”

(Note: Redshift is a term used to measure distance to distant objects. The higher the number, the older and more distant the object)

Based on Bruno’s curious discovery, the Galaxy Zoo team put in significant efforts to learn more about this merger. Galaxy Zoo team member Kyle Willett provided an update this week, highlighting several new insights, along with more information on this merger’s significance.

Close-Up view of Violin Clef galaxy merger. Image Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey
( http://www.sdss3.org )

One of the additional reasons the system is of scientific interest is that while merging galaxies are quite common in our universe, the merging process is fairly quick compared to the lifetime of a galaxy. What is not common is to observe a system with long tails and multiple companions, which gives researchers an opportunity to test their models of galaxy interaction against a system “caught in the act”.

Researchers are also interested in the content of galaxies and their tails – specifically the gas and stars. In most mergers, there is a compression of gas by gravity, which leads to a short burst of new star formation in the galaxies and their tails.

The resulting star formation results in young, hot stars which are typically blue. (Note: Younger/hotter stars are bluer, older/cooler stars are redder). What is odd about the Violin Clef merger is that all four galaxies and the tidal tails are red.

Willett stated “If that’s the case, then we want to estimate the current age of the system. Were the galaxies all red ellipticals to begin with, with very little gas that could form new stars?” Willett also added, “Or has the starburst already come and gone – and if so, how long-lived are these tidal tails going to be?”

By using analyzing the light given off by the merging galaxies, researchers can obtain a treasure trove of information. By measuring how much the spectra is redshifted, researchers can determine an accurate distance. In the case of the Violin Clef merger, an accurate redshift would let the team know for certain if all four galaxies genuinely belong to a single interacting group.

Once researchers have a distance estimate, they can study UV and radio flux data and determine an estimate of the total star formation rate. Additionally, if researchers have very accurate data from light received (spectroscopy), it’s possible to measure the relative velocities of each interacting galaxy, and build a sort of “3-D” picture of how the four galaxies are interacting.

Since there wasn’t any existing spectral analysis data of the merger system, Danielle Berg, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, observed the Violin Clef in September using the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona and provided the additional data needed to answer some of the questions the Galaxy Zoo team had about the system.

Spectral analysis of the "Violin Clef" galaxy merger. Image Credit: Danielle Berg/University of Minnesota/Multiple Mirror Telescope

After the team analyzed the spectral data, they learned that all four galaxies are at the same redshift (z=0.0956 +- 0.002), and as such, are most likely members of the same group. Further analysis reinforced the lack of evidence for strong star formation, which helps to confirm the red colors see in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.

Based on these recent discoveries, the Galaxy Zoo team is putting out a second call for assistance on analyzing the Violin Clef merger. According to the team, the next step in the analysis will be working with simulations like the ones in Merger Zoo. Now that the team has confirmed the Violin Clef is almost certainly a quadruple merger, the number of merger models than need to be ran is greatly reduced.

How can citizen scientists help the Galaxy Zoo team with this step of their research?

You can start by visiting the Galaxy Zoo mergers project page at: http://mergers.galaxyzoo.org/

By participating in the Galaxy Zoo mergers project, you can identify simulations that resemble the Violin Clef. Your participation can also provide the Galaxy Zoo team with additional data which may enable them to have another scientific publication, plus these types of projects can be very fun and exciting to work with!

Learn more about becoming a Galaxy Zoo participant at: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/how_to_take_part

Source: Galaxy Zoo

Need an Excuse to Gaze at the Moon? International Observe the Moon Night is Coming!

This photo of the Moon was taken on October 2, 2011 in Angera, Lombardy, IT. Credit: Milo. Click image to see on Flickr.
This photo of the Moon was taken on October 2, 2011 in Angera, Lombardy, IT. Credit: Milo.

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Most of us space-minded folks don’t need an excuse to gaze upon the brightest object in the night sky – our own Moon. But just in case you need a reason or are hoping to convince some friends or family to take a look with you, there’s a special event coming up that encourages more people to take the time to take a gander at our closest and constant companion in space. Saturday, October 8, 2011 is the second annual International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN). Across the country and around the world, astronomy clubs, museums, observatories, parks, and schools will hold special events to introduce the public to the Moon. There will be telescopes to look through, activities to join, and presentations from experts in lunar science will be streamed to participating event locations.

“There will hundreds of events world-wide that will share the excitement of lunar science and explorations” said Brian Day, from the NASA Lunar Science Institute, who is one of the organizers of the event.

This photo of the Moon was taken on October 4, 2011. Credit: Amar Mainkar. Click to see the image on Flickr.

In a podcast for 365 Days of Astronomy and NLSI, Day said that right now an especially exciting time to engage the public in the Moon. (Listen to the podcast here.) A new generation of robotic probes has brought about a revolution in our understanding of our nearest neighbor in space. Our long-held view of a non-changing and dry Moon is now being replaced with an appreciation for the Moon as a dynamic body with significant deposits of water ice, a fascinating history, and a thin atmosphere that may play a role in a potential lunar water cycle. “It is indeed a New Moon!” Day said.

There’s excitement on the amateur front, as well. “Recent developments in technology have allowed amateur astronomers to image the Moon in detail that previously was only attainable from orbiting spacecraft,” Day said. “The work that they are doing and the imagery they are getting is just fantastic So, this is a great time to appreciate what is happening with the Moon on both the amateur and professional communities.”

(Thanks to amateur astronomers who have uploaded images to Universe Today’s Flickr group — the images included in this article are courtesy of Milo, Amar Mainkar and Marcopic3000.)

The overall goal for InOMN is to engage lunar science and education communities, amateur astronomers, space enthusiasts, and the general public in what has become an annual lunar observation campaign.

“The Moon will be at a favorable phase, and we are going to be able to see some really magnificent features,” Day said, “so it is a good time to show up at an International Observe the Moon Night event and take a look at what is happening in the sky.”

This image of the Moon was taken on Oct. 5, 2011. Credit: Marcopic3000. Click on image to see it on Flickr.

This year’s InOMN may provide a bit of an extra show in Europe and Northern Asia, as it is occurring on the night of the maximum of the Draconid meteor shower.

For more information and to find an InOMN event near you or to learn how to conduct your own InOMN event, visit http://www.observethemoonnight.org. The website includes information on events around the world, activities and downloadable information to allow you to host your own event, and much more.

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Citizen Science: Help Find Life on Mars

This photo was taken by a DeepWorker submersible in Kelly Lake. Credit: NASA

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Interested in helping NASA scientists pinpoint where to look for signs of life on Mars?

If so, you can join a new citizen science website called MAPPER, launched in conjunction with the Pavilion Lake Research Project’s 2011 field season.

How can the MAPPER and Pavilion Lake Research projects help scientists look for off-Earth life?

Since 2008, the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) has used DeepWorker submersible vehicles to investigate the underwater environment of two lakes in Canada (Pavilion and Kelly). With the MAPPER project, citizen scientists can work with NASA scientists and explore the lake bottoms from the view of a DeepWorker pilot.

The PLRP team’s main area of focus are freshwater carbonate formations known as microbialites. By studying microbialites that thrive in Pavilion and Kelly Lake, the scientists believe a better understanding of how the formations develop. Through a greater understanding of the carbonate formations, the team believes they will gain deeper insights into where signs of life may be found on Mars and beyond.

To investigate the formations in detail, video footage and photos of the lake bottom are recorded by DeepWorker sub pilots. The data requires analysis in order to determine what types of features can be found in different parts of the lake. Analyzing the data allows the team to answer questions such as; “how does microbialite texture and size vary with depth?” and “why do microbialites grow in certain parts of the lake but not in others?”.

The amount of data to analyze is staggering – if each image taken were to be printed, the stack would be taller than the depth of Pavilion Lake (over 60 meters). If each image were reviewed one-by-one, the PLRP’s team would never be able to complete their work. Distributing the work to the general public solves the problem, due in part by spreading the massive work out over many volunteers across the Internet.

Since the PLRP 2011 field season Morphology Analysis Project for Participatory Exploration and Research (MAPPER) MAPPER has been open to the general public. By opening MAPPER to the public, anyone can explore Pavilion and Kelly Lake as full-fledged members of PLRP’s Remote Science Team.

So how do volunteers use MAPPER to help the PLRP team?

Once volunteers create an account at: getmapper.com, the volunteers complete a brief tutorial, which provides the necessary training to tag photos in the PLRP dataset. MAPPER has ease-of-use in mind, providing users with a simple interface, which makes tagging features like sediment, microbialites, rocks, and algae easy. In case a user is unsure of how to tag a photo, examples and descriptions of each feature are available.

Screenshot of Mapper in action. Image Credit: NASA

In a manner similar to online games, each photo tagged earns the volunteer points which can be used to unlock new activities. Volunteers can also compete with other Remote Science Team members on the MAPPER leaderboard. Volunteers can also check to see how close each dataset is to being completely reviewed and see how much they have contributed to said dataset, as well as seeing what features have been tagged the most. Volunteers who tag a photo as ‘cool’ save said image to their Cool Photos album, allowing them to easily find the image at a later date.

PLRP Remote Science Team members from across North America, Europe and Asia have already been making discoveries in Pavilion and Kelly Lake. If you’d like to become a PLRP Remote Science Team member, visit: www.getmapper.com
You can also learn more by visiting the MAPPER Facebook page

Big Find: Citizen Scientists Discover Two Extrasolar Planets

Three exoplanet candidates found by the Planet Hunters citizen science project. Credit: Zooniverse

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Hip-hip hooray for citizen scientists! The first two exoplanet candidates have been identified by members of the public through the citizen science project Planet Hunters. The project, which began in December 2010, uses public archive data from the planet-hunting Kepler mission, and excitingly, the planets were found within the first month after the project began. One planet is potentially a rocky Earth-like planet, while the other is likely a gas-giant like Jupiter.

“I think it’s truly amazing that someone sitting at home at their computer was the first to know that a star somewhere out there in our Milky Way likely has a companion,” said Meg Schwamb, a Yale University researcher and Planet Hunters co-founder.

By all accounts, the Kepler mission has been a spectacular success – with over 1,200 planet candidates detected so far– and the data obtained by the spacecraft has been a treasure trove for scientists. But over 40,000 web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering planets – and especially Earth-like planets — orbiting around them.

“These planet candidates just show what wealth of interesting gems still remaining to be found in the Kepler data,” Schwamb told Universe Today. She added that for the science team, the Planet Hunters project was somewhat of a gamble, as no one was sure human eyes would be able to spot things possibly missed by automated routines.

“The gamble paid off, and we’re all very excited about the discovery of these planet candidates,” she said. “These candidates have demonstrated the truly amazing power of human pattern recognition. Planet Hunters doesn’t replace the great work and the analysis being done by the Kepler team. But it has proven itself to be a valuable and complementary tool in the search for extrasolar planets.”

The Planet Hunters team sent the top 10 candidates found by the citizen scientists to the Kepler team, and two of the planets have survived the initial checks for false-positives, whether they are masquerading as eclipsing binaries, for example. Scientists used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) at Caltech to analyze the host stars and determined that two of the 10 met their criteria for being classified as planet candidates.

The two candidates were flagged as potential planets by several dozen different Planet Hunters users, as the same data are analyzed by more than one user.

The two candidate planets orbit their host stars with periods ranging from 10 to 50 days — much shorter than the 365 days it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun — and have radii that range in size from two-and-a-half to eight times Earth’s radius. Despite one planet having the potential to be a rocky world, it does not lie in the so-called “habitable zone” where liquid water, and therefore life as we know it, could exist.

Schwamb said to confirm a transiting planet, the team scientists will look at the radial velocities to measure the wobble of the star back and forth caused by the orbiting body.

“This allows you to get the mass of the orbiting companion,” she said. “Kepler was always intended to be a statistical mission. The majority of the over 1,200 Kepler planet candidates and the planet candidates found by Planet Hunters will not be confirmed with radial velocity measurements either because the star is too faint or the radial velocity signal caused by the orbiting planet would be smaller than the current sensitivity limits of the world’s best spectrographs. If it’s possible that we can confirm the presence of these planets with radial velocities measured on the Keck telescopes, we will definitely try.”

As of now, the Planet Hunter scientists, which also includes Yale astronomer Debra Fisher, say there is at least a 95% chance that these two candidates are bona fide planets.

Spurred by success, the Planet Hunters citizen scientist are now sifting through a new round of publicly available data from the Kepler mission in hopes of finding even more planets. “This is what we found after just a preliminary glance through the first round of Kepler data,” Fischer said. “There’s no doubt that, with each new round of data, there will be more discoveries to come.”

Read the team’s paper here. It has been submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Help Scientists Decide on Which KBOs the New Horizons Spacecraft Will Visit

How would you like to help choose an additional destination or two for a spacecraft heading to the outer solar system? A new citizen science project from the Zooniverse — called Ice Hunters — will allow the public to help discover a potential new, icy follow-on destination for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which is currently en route to make the first flyby of the Pluto system. However, after it zooms past Pluto, the spacecraft will have the capability to explore other Kuiper Belt Objects. But, the destination has yet to be chosen. That’s where you can help.

“Projects like this make the public part of modern space exploration,” said Dr. Pamela Gay. “The New Horizon’s mission was launched knowing we’d have to discover the object it would visit after Pluto. Now is the time to make that discovery and thanks to IceHunters, anyone can be that discoverer.”

With Ice Hunters, the public can help scientists search through specially-obtained deep telescopic images for currently unknown objects in the Kuiper Belt. While the images you’ll be perusing in Ice Hunters won’t be the beautiful astronomical images seen in the Galaxy Zoo classification of galaxies or the Moon Zoo images of the Moon, the science rewards in Ice Hunters will be spectacular.

And there’s more: there’s also the potential for discovering variable stars and asteroids.

What’s cool is that you’ll be searching for KBO’s and potential dwarf planets in much the same way that Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto: comparing images of the same region of the Kuiper Belt and looking for objects that move or vary in brightness.

“The New Horizons project is breaking new ground in many ways,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. “We’re flying by a new kind of planet and we’ll be making the most distant encounters with planetary bodies in the history of space exploration, and now we’re employing citizen science to help find our potential extended mission flyby targets, perhaps a billion kilometers farther than even distant Pluto and its moons. We’re very excited to be working with Zooniverse and breaking this new kind of ground. We hope the public will be excited to join in with us and with Zooniverse to make a little history of their own by discovering our next flyby target after Pluto.”

Somewhere, on the outer edges of the solar system an icy body lurks undiscovered, orbiting on a path that will just happen to carry it toward a potential rendezvous with the New Horizons spacecraft.

New Horizons will flyby Pluto in 2015, and there will be enough gas in the spacecraft’s tank to fly toward at least one and possibly two Kuiper Belt Objects in the distant outer solar system. The expected date of the KBO flyby will be between 2016 and 2020, depending on the object chosen and its distance from Pluto.

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to find the most interesting KBO possible for New Horizons to visit. If that object can be found , it will become the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft from Earth.

The Kuiper Belt is a region of the outer solar system, extending past Neptune, (from 30AU) out to nearly twice Neptune’s orbit (out to roughly 55AU), which contains icy bodies in a variety of different sizes up to thousands of kilometers across. The first KBO other than Pluto was only discovered in 1992, and the KBO population is still not well mapped. Ice Hunters will do its part to study one small slice of the Kuiper Belt as it looks for an object along New Horizon’s trajectory after its Pluto flyby.

Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, scientists have imaged that region, producing millions of pictures for that could contain images of the rare objects that are orbiting toward just the right location, along with many other small worlds on different trajectories.

In “difference” images, which are created by subtracting observations taken at two different times, scientists can mostly (but not entirely) remove the light from constant sources like stars and galaxies. Left behind are the things that move or vary in brightness, which is what the users of IceHunters will be looking for. Since the stars never subtract off perfectly, the images appear messy, and computers can’t be trained to find objects as effectively as people can.

“When you’re looking for something special in masses of messy, real-world data, sometimes there’s no substitute for the human eye, and Zooniverse Ice Hunters will put thousands of eyes to work on this important job,” said John Spencer of Southwest Research Institute, a member of the New Horizons science team who is coordinating the search effort.

Just as other Zooniverse projects have easy-to-use websites, IceHunters.org is no different. “Using just about any modern web-browser, users can circle potential KBOs and mark with a star the locations of asteroids,” said web developer Cory Lehan from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who has participated in several Zooniverse web designs. “The website is filled with examples to help get people started. Anyone should be able to take part – No Flash required.”

So check out Ice Hunters and start discovering today!

You can follow Universe Today senior editor Nancy Atkinson on Twitter: @Nancy_A. Follow Universe Today for the latest space and astronomy news on Twitter @universetoday and on Facebook.

Spectacular Galaxies Dancing Towards Destruction

Image of NGC 6872 (left) and companion galaxy IC 4970 (right) locked in a tango as the two galaxies gravitationally interact. The galaxies lie about 200 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Pavo (the Peacock). Image credit: Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club, Travis Rector (University of Alaska, Anchorage), Ángel López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Observatory/Macquarie University), and the Australian Gemini Office.

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More than just another pretty picture? I’ll say! This beautiful image of the galaxy pair NGC 6872 and IC 4970 was part of a competition for high school students in Australia to obtain scientifically useful (and aesthetically pleasing) images using the Gemini Observatory. The winners were students from the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club in central Sydney, who proposed that Gemini investigate these two galaxies that are embraced in a graceful galactic dance that, — as the team described in the essay to support their entry — “…will also serve to illustrate the situation faced by the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy in millions of years.”

We can only hope we look this pretty millions of years from now!

This image shows what happens when galaxies interact, and how the gravitational forces distort and tear away at their original structure. Spiral galaxies can have their arms elongate out to enormous distances: in NGC 6872, the arms have been stretched out to span hundreds of thousands of light-years—many times further than the spiral arms of our own Milky Way galaxy. Over hundreds of millions of years, NGC 6872’s arms will fall back toward the central part of the galaxy, and the companion galaxy (IC 4970) will eventually be merged into NGC 6872.

But that will be another pretty picture, as galaxy mergers often leads to a burst of new star formation. Already, the blue light of recently created star clusters dot the outer reaches of NGC 6872’s elongated arms. Dark fingers of dust and gas along the arms soak up the visible light. That dust and gas is the raw material out of which future generations of stars could be born.

Members of the SGHS Astronomy Club Executive Council receiving the Gemini image on behalf of the entire club. Photo credit: Australian Gemini Office.

Learn more about the contest and the winning team at this article on the Gemini website. Also, a new contest is underway for Australian students in 2011, and more details can be found at this link.

Source: Gemini Observatory

Look to Orion and Help Measure the Darkness of Your Night Sky

Orion as seen from Easter Island. Credit: Wally Pacholka / AstroPics.com / TWAN. Used by permission.

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How dark are your skies? GLOBE at Night wants to know! Join the 6th annual worldwide GLOBE at Night campaign, which is going on right now in the northern hemisphere. “We are running two campaigns this year, from February 22nd to March 6th and from March 22nd to April 4th in the northern hemisphere and March 24th to April 6th in the southern hemisphere,” said Rob Sparks from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is one of the sponsors for this year’s campaign.

By participating in the international star-hunting campaign, you will help address the problems of light pollution locally as well as globally. More participants are needed this year, so sign up to be a citizen scientist today!

Light pollution is a serious and growing global concern. With half of the world’s population now living in cities, many urban dwellers have never experienced the wonder of pristinely dark skies and perhaps, maybe never will. But light pollution is also a concern in areas of safety, energy conservation, cost, health and effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to view the stars.

But this is also one of the easiest environmental problems you can address on local levels.

GLOBE at Night is a wonderful way for everyone around the world to participate to raise public awareness of the impact of artificial lighting on local environments. This event encourages everyone – students, educators, dark sky advocates and the general public – to measure the darkness of their local skies and contribute their observations online to a world map.

The campaign is easy and fun to do, and as in previous years, there are just five easy steps to participate. But this year, there is now an app for that, where participants can submit their measurements in real time if they have a smart phone or tablet.

“There is now a mobile website to submit data,” Sparks told Universe Today. “It will take the GPS data, time and date from your phone and has a cool little graphic to help you determine the brightness of the sky. It even had a red screen feature for night use.” The app can be found at this link.

To participate, you will match the appearance of the constellation Orion in the first campaign (and Leo or Crux in the second campaign) with simple star maps of progressively fainter stars found. Then you submit your measurements, including the date, time, and location of your comparison. After all the campaign’s observations are submitted, the project’s organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide. Over the last five annual 2-week campaigns, volunteers from more than 100 nations contributed 52,000 measurements, one third of which came from last year’s campaign.

The five easy star-hunting steps are:

1) Find your latitude and longitude.

2) Find Orion by going outside an hour after sunset (about 7-10pm local time).

3) Match your nighttime sky to one of the GLOBE at Night magnitude charts

4) Report your observation.

5) Compare your observation to thousands around the world.

Go to the GLOBE at Night website for all the details. There is even a 10-minute audio podcast on light pollution and GLOBE at Night. Or download a 45-minute powerpoint and accompanying audio. GLOBE at Night is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Be a part of GLOBE at Night and help the campaign exceed the 17,800 observations contributed last year. Your measurements will make a world of difference.

Thanks to the GLOBE at Night team for securing permission for Universe Today to post the lead image, from Wally Pacholka from AstroPics.com and TWAN (The World At Night).