Radio JOVE

Astronomy doesn't get much more hands-on than building your own radio telescope. A network of citizen scientists is helping NASA study bursts of radio emissions from Jupiter and the Sun using a $125 radio telescope kit from NASA. When charged subatomic particles in Jupiter's atmosphere move through the planet's magnetic field, the field accelerates the particles in a way that causes them to emit radio waves that can be detected on Earth. In fact, NASA scientists discovered how to track Jupiter's rotation based on the timing of the radio emissions. Check out the program's website to learn how to recognize and analyze a burst, and use the kit's software to predict bursts from Jupiter and plot the intensity of bursts over time.

GLOBE at Night

Light pollution makes stargazing difficult, especially in urban areas. It presents a real challenge for astronomers and can even harm wildlife such as bats as well.

The GLOBE at Night program is trying to measure light pollution worldwide. To help, just find your latitude and longitude (an easy task in this age of Google Maps and smartphone GPS), and, depending on your location, find the constellations Orion, Leo, or Crux. Notice how bright the constellation is between 8 and 10 pm local time, and compare that to the program's magnitude chart. Report your observation and compare it to light pollution elsewhere in the world.

Download the Loss of the Night application for Android to make the work quicker and simpler. The application provides an arrow to point your way to a reference star, and it submits your data anonymously to GLOBE at Night. Apple users can participate in a different but related project via the Dark Sky Meter app, which compares a photo of something totally dark, like the inside of a pocket, to a photo of your night sky to calculate the sky's brightness. It can then submit your data to the International Dark Sky Association.

HiWish

You can guide NASA's science objectives without leaving your computer. The HiWish project invites members of the public to choose targets for the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) imaging system aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Browse the project's archive of detailed color images of the Martian landscape, many of which are in stereo pairs—so have your old-fashioned 3D glasses ready. Make sure to check out the list of pending suggestions so you know which areas of Mars interest other citizen scientists, then create an account and suggest an area or feature that interests you. There are no guarantees you'll get the images you ask for, but you can improve your odds by backing up your suggestion with a good argument.

Zooniverse

You need only a computer and some free time to get involved in some real space science with Zooniverse, a suite of projects built around the same basic concept: Volunteer citizen scientists work through thousands of images to find and identify interesting features. For instance, you can classify features on the lunar surface with Moon Zoo or NASA's Lunar Impacts project, map the Martian landscape with Planet Four or NASA's Be a Martian project, detect and track solar storms with Solar Stormwatch, search for exoplanets with Planet Hunters, or spot newly forming stars in our galaxy with The Milky Way Project.

Ask Your Own Questions

If you want to ask your own scientific questions, you may not need to build anything or design your own experiment. Many of these projects offer access to thousands of images of the surface of Mars, the heart of the Milky Way, and distant galaxies; radio JOVE and GLOBE at Night both offer access to the observations of other participants. You could study changes, geographical patterns, or seasonal variations in light pollution, or you could be the first to spot an interesting pattern in Jupiter's radio emissions. Additionally, the MY NASA DATA (Mentoring and inquirY using NASA Data for Atmospheric and earth science for Teachers and Amateurs) program has a plethora of raw information on patterns in atmospheric radiation, Earth's weather patterns and variation in temperature over time, solar activity, and other phenomena.

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