Citizen Science Astronomy Project : Citizen Astronomy with Unistellar

1.What is the name of the project?

  • Citizen Astronomy with Unistellar.

2.Learn the task and do some work for the project (ie. Classification). What was your impression of it? (2-3 sentences)

  • It was interesting. I knew asteroids are potentially hazardous objects before, but I didn’t know well and citizen can join this project. That was interesting too.

3.Who are the researchers, what fields of science and engineering to they represent, and what do they provide?

  • Unistellar Citizen Astronomer, Quebec Georges Simard and the Unistellar Network members are a researchers, and they collaborating over social media and the messaging platform Slack, observers from different countries strategize ways to gather the best data on asteroids, comets, exoplanets and more.

4.What is the role of the non-scientists/citizens in this project?

  • citizen scientists helps gather and analyze data with their passion.

5.What does your project monitor and how? (Hint: look for the “About” section, science section, blog section and/or similar pages of the project website to provide more detail on this.)

  • They research these potentially dangerous objects and detect asteroids near Earth to help protect humans from destructive effects. It helps find and discover distant planets that orbit stars outside our solar system and find life beyond Earth.

6.Why are the researchers monitoring it? In other words, what does the information they collect help them make more informed decisions about? (1-2 sentences)

  • The researchers monitoring the potentially dangerous objects and collect information about undefined things from outside of solar system.

7.How does this project benefit society? Say more than just that it provides knowledge. What practical purpose might it have? If the website does not give any hint, think about it and think of a way that it could possibly be used to benefit society. (2-3 sentences)

  • The project can identify and prevent threats to Earth by examining stars outside our solar system. The project also studies animals outside of Earth, so we can discover new plants and animals and help our society make better inventions.