CITIZEN SCIENCE

CITIZEN SCIENCE NEWS

A Truly Inspirational Story!  Caltech astronomer Davy Kirkpatrick grew up in a small farming community in Tennessee who dreamed about astronomy as a boy. He was fortunate enough to have an excellent chemistry/physics teacher in ninth-grade, Marilyn Morrison. She worked with Davy and his mother to prepare him for astronomy as a profession. Teacher Morrison’s efforts led Davy to a faculty position at Caltech.

I love it when an act of kindness, such as teacher Morrison’s tutelage, is repaid forward, and this is one such case.

Another precocious young student, Matteo Paz, was inspired by his mother’s taking him to public Stargazing Lectures at Caltech. His interest was further piqued by his participation in a summer of 2022 program called “Caltech Planet Finder Academy,” led by Caltech Professor of Astronomy Andrew Howard. There young Paz met Kirkpatrick, who apparently saw some of himself in Paz and worked with him on a larger project than the one the CPFA envisioned.

The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite had compiled a ten-year database prior to its retirement of repeated observations of the entire sky, allowing for the search of objects that moved or changed over short time periods. The problem was that the database was extremely large. Kirkpatrick took on the immense task of sifting through the data in search of a few interesting objects/events, and asked young Paz to help.

“Paz had no intention of sifting through the data manually. His schoolwork had prepared him to bring a new viewpoint to the challenge. He'd taken an interest in AI during an elective that integrated coding, theoretical computer science, and formal mathematics.

“Paz knew that AI trains best on vast, orderly datasets like the one Kirkpatrick had given him. And Paz had the advanced math knowledge that he needed to enjoy programming: He was already studying advanced undergraduate math in Pasadena Unified School District's Math Academy, in which students finish AP calculus BC in eighth grade.

“So Paz set off to develop a machine-learning technique to analyze the entire dataset and flag potential variable objects. In those six weeks, he began to draft the AI model, which began to show some promise. As he worked, he consulted with Kirkpatrick to learn the relevant astronomy and astrophysics.”

“Paz has refined the AI model to process all of the raw data from NEOWISE's observations and has analyzed the results. Trained to detect minute differences in the telescope's infrared measurements, the algorithms flagged and classified 1.5 million potential new objects in the data. In 2025, Paz and Kirkpatrick plan to publish the complete catalog of objects that varied considerably in brightness in the NEOWISE data.

“Now, while he finishes high school, Paz is a Caltech employee. He works for Kirkpatrick in IPAC, which manages, processes, archives, and analyzes data from NEOWISE and several other NASA and NSF–supported space missions. It's Paz's first paying job.” [emphasis added]

Such was the value of a simple act of kindness by a good teacher. “Thank you, Marilyn Morrison!”

For more information on this amazing story, and the source of the quotes above, see: https://phys.org/news/2025-04-high-school-student-ai-reveal.html.

Citizen Scientists and AI Find 430,000 New Galaxies: “Citizen scientists and artificial intelligence have come together to discover a staggering 430,000 galaxies scattered across the universe. The massive haul includes 30,000 ring galaxies, which are considered to be the rarest of all possible galaxy shapes. The discoveries represent the first results from the "GALAXY CRUISE" citizen science project. They were delivered by 10,000 volunteers who scoured through data collected with the Subaru Telescope.” For more info, see the source of the quote here: https://www.space.com/citizen-scientists-artificial-intelligence-galaxy-discovery.

CITIZEN SCIENCE FYI

Citizen Scientist Scores Big: Jupiter’s colorful banded clouds in its atmosphere are favorites of backyard astronomer and planetary scientist alike. They have long been thought of as being composed of crystals of ammonia ice, since ammonia is a major constituent of Jupiter’s atmosphere; the differences in color being due to minor variations due to small amounts of other ices also present. But not so fast, Windex breath!

Dr. Steven Hill, has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, but is otherwise a citizen scientist as an observational astronomer, recently “demonstrated that the abundance of ammonia and cloud-top pressure in Jupiter's atmosphere could be mapped using commercially-available telescopes and a few specially colored filters.” Now the abundance of ammonia in the jovian atmosphere can be mapped by amateur astronomers! Dr. Hill’s work stimulated observations by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument at the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile that showed that the jovian clouds lie too deeply in the atmosphere for ammonia ice crystals to exist. Instead, the clouds are made of icy crystals of ammonium hydrosulfate.

“The ammonia maps resulting from this simple analytical technique can be determined at a fraction of the computational cost of more sophisticated methods. This means they could be used by citizen scientists to track ammonia and cloud-top pressure variations across features in Jupiter's atmosphere, including Jupiter's bands, small storms, and large vortices like the Great Red Spot.” For the full quotes and more information, see: https://phys.org/news/2025-01-citizen-science-reveals-jupiter-clouds.html

CITIZEN SCIENCE SUCCESS SPOTLIGHT

High School Citizen Scientists helped confirm and characterize two exoplanets. “There has never been a better time to be an amateur astronomer. Recent advancements in affordable “smart” telescopes have ushered in a new era of citizen science that blurs the lines between professionals and hobbyists. Career astronomers are especially keen for the assistance of sky-watchers when it comes to the confirmation and characterization of exoplanets. Recently, two citizen scientist groups (some of the members just in high school!) have contributed to academic studies confirming the existence of different planet candidates.” For more information on these successes, see: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/high-school-citizen-scientists-join-the-hunt-for-exoplanets.

CITIZEN SCIENCE OPPORTUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Asteroid Occultations: Small objects, such as asteroids, will occasionally pass directly in front of a star, causing a temporary drop in light because the starlight is blocked from our view. Such occultations can now be predicted with accuracy because of the tremendous database of star locations from the Gaia satellite. Where the asteroid-caused shadowing of a given star makes a narrow track along the ground akin to that made by the Moon’s shadow during a solar eclipse. If a large number of observers are watching from different locations near that track, each of which has an accurate clock, then the shape of the shadow, hence the shape of the asteroid, can be determined. The September, 2023, issue of Sky and Telescope magazine has an article about a team of “Shadow Chasers,” who have been doing that work (see pages 34-40). This technique, occultation astrometry, was used to determine the dumbbell shape of the KBO Arrokoth, confirmed by the fly-by of it by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2017. Data from this project was used to precisely navigate New Horizons for the fly-by, too! The shapes of the smaller Trojan satellites of Jupiter, the objectives of the upcoming Lucy mission, are being determined with this technique.

There are opportunities for you to help with this research. See the cited article in Sky and Telescope for more information, check out the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA), and find out more at: https://lucy.swri.edu/occultations.html!

NOTE: The Psyche mission has a number of opportunities for public education and involvement; for more, see: https://psyche.asu.edu/get-involved.

CITIZEN SCIENCE AND OTHER INFORMATION

NASA Citizen Science: https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience and https://science.nasa.gov/heliophysics/programs/citizen-science and https://sservi.nasa.gov/citizen-science and https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/citizen-science and https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-at-home-be-a-scientist and https://nasacitsci.gmri.org

Check out NASA’s Open Innovation: Boosting NASA Higher, Faster, and Farther document for information on how you can help NASA at: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy1920openinnovationreport-final.pdf 

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice is an on-line, open-access, peer-reviewed journal that “focuses on advancing the global field of citizen science by “providing a venue for citizen science researchers and practitioners to share best practices in conceiving, developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining projects that facilitate public participation in scientific endeavors in any discipline. Authors include scientists, educators, community organizers, information technologists, conservation biologists, evaluators, land-use planners, and more. Readers include anyone interested in understanding and improving practice of the growing citizen science field.” Check it out at: https://theoryandpractice.citizenscienceassociation.org!

CitizenScience.gov is an “official government website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across the U.S. government.” It has information about available citizen science projects, how to work with the citizen science community to expand efforts and opportunities, and information on how to plan, design, and execute a crowdsourcing/citizen science program. Check it out at: https://www.citizenscience.gov/catalog/#; see also: https://www.citizenscience.org.

NOAA also has a citizen science program (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/citizen-science) and they have developed a “tool kit” for Federal crowdsourcing and citizen science; see: https://www.noaa.gov/office-education/citizen-science-crowdsourcing.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) posts info on how to participate in astronomy research at: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/citizen-science-projects.

If your interests are more “down to Earth,” check out the US Geological Survey; see: https://www.usgs.gov/science-support/osqi/youth-education-science/citizen-science

National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/citizenscience/index.htm

Other agencies offer CS opportunities; see: https://www.citizenscience.gov/#

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_citizen_science_projects