Amazing Project

Tonight I came across the most amazing thing.  It's called Zooniverse.  I saw a link on facebook sharing the Andromeda Project (about), where you can actually go through the images of the Andromeda Galaxy and label star clusters, distant galaxies and picture errors for the astronomers. 

For those who have been out at the observatory with me, you probably know that Open Clusters are my favorite deep sky objects. This is my personal favorite that I've observed:

NGC 2362:  Located in the constellation of Taurus, the first time I found this open cluster the beauty actually took my breath away.  This image cannot fully convey the wonder, but few images could ever attempt to replace looking through a telescope yourself.

The point is to go through the images and help label clusters and points of interest or irregularities for the scientists.  The tutorial was quick and fairly easy, they also have an added guide to help with tricky identifications and a forum (called Talk) to connect with other users.

I'm excited about this projects because of my passion for clusters, but also because it helps me give back to the researchers.

On the Zooniverse website they have 13 different science projects that you can choose to help.  A majority of the projects are Astronomy based, but they also have 4 biology (3 nature, 1 health), 2 Climate and 1 Humanities projects.  Also they have 3 different lab projects, 2 space and one humanities.  Although one of the space one is about marine life, so it's a mix.
I plan on trying out each one and reporting back to you. 

Also if you would like see what I've done in the Zooniverse suite, I have claimed the user name AskAlisonScience.  I'm not sure exactly what the mechanisms are for looking at user profiles yet, but if you join and can look me up, that's my name.

Keep Learning!
Alison

A Quick Astronomy Question

Q: What beginner telescope would you recommend for a young adult? What field guide or book?

A:  The book I would recommend is the Pocket Sky Atlas.  This was the required field book for my Observational Astronomy class.  Also, I would suggest learning how to use a Skymap.  They can be found here, each month a new one comes out with this months events in Astronomy, and what the sky will be like on a nice clear night.

As for telescopes, there are many factors to consider.

One: What will you be using it for?  How deep into the night sky do you want to see?  I guarantee you won't have a view like the Hubble, but you would be surprised what you can find with a simple telescope.

Two: This is a big one.  Budget.  You can easily spend less than a $1,000 on a new telescope.  If I could go out and buy the telescope I wanted right now I would probably spend $500-$700.  (That would most likely include the accessories that I want)

When you look at telescopes there are several different styles to consider.   I'm partial to reflecting telescopes, but there are also refractors.  Reflecting uses mirrors, Refracting uses lenses.  Both work very well, I'm just more used to reflecting

Another option to consider is the size of the aperture.   Basically the larger the diameter of the barrel the better the view.  Of course, the larger the barrel the less likely you are going to move it a lot. 

Telescopes.com is a good resource for looking into different telescopes.  They have a beginner telescopes section with prices ranging from ~$50 to ~$400.  The other thing to consider is binoculars.  A nice pair can be turned to the night sky and you can see a surprising amount.  Actually the skymap mentioned above lists what you can see with binoculars each month as well.

So the actual recommendation?  Well looking around telescopes.com, I found a reasonable one.  It is a 3 inch reflecting telescope.  It is a table top style, which means it is very small.  But it also comes bundled with a tripod here.  I'm not a huge fan of the table top style, but a lot of that depends on your viewing area and set up.  If you had a tripod, it would be a lot more versatile which is what sold me on it. 

To me, if you go below a three inch telescope you might as well get binoculars.  The biggest limitation to using binoculars is that if you don't have a stand for them, you have a hard time sharing the view.

Good Luck,
Alison