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

Camp: The First Two Days

I have been busier than I thought I would be the last few days.  On the upside I've been having a blast!

After my first afternoon doing this science summer camp I told my mom "I can't wait until I'm doing this for the rest of my life."  Even when I get frustrated I'm happy.  This past spring I kept thinking the words "I've arrived" when I was out at the observatory during a public night.  I keep thinking those words again.  What I mean by this is; I've become comfortable enough that I can answer most questions without prep and I am also comfortable with what I don't know.  I can enjoy the process of finding out myself or learning that I have more to learn.

Shanda and I are goofing around here.  We found these masks among other  supplies.

For example, we were talking about evaporation.  Shanda, a teacher I'm working with, posed the question "What happens if you add food coloring to water and let the water evaporate?  Does the food coloring stay in the cup or does it evaporate too?"  We were not sure of the answer and we had a discussion with the kids.  During the next break when the kids had some play time we realized that we had all the components to concoct an experiment.  In the discussion I pointed out that if you boiled sea water, you would be left with salt.

Our experiment was set up like this:  we put water, salt and blue food coloring into a ceramic mug.

Regular table salt and blue water.  Plus you can see that I took off my mask.

I then heated the mug on a hot plate to expedite the evaporation process.

Boiling blue salt water!  Next is a video if you are interested.

 We determined that we could make blue salt!  The kids thought this was very cool. 

 We had a lot of fun with this.  (Well I did at least!)  Soon we will be doing some crafts with the kids.  Hopefully I will get some good pictures of that.


I will answer the second question that I proposed soon.  I just wanted to share this first.  Again, my schedule has gotten away from me but I'm enjoying every minute of it.

I can't wait for tomorrow at camp.  Night everyone!