Ideas for Citizen Science in Astronomy

Abstract

We review the relatively new, internet-enabled, and rapidly-evolving field of citizen science, focusing on research projects in stellar, extragalactic and solar system astronomy that have benefited from the participation of members of the public, often in large numbers. We find these volunteers making contributions to astronomy in a variety of ways: making and analyzing new observations, visually classifying features in images and light curves, exploring models constrained by astronomical datasets, and initiating new scientific enquiries. The most productive citizen astronomy projects involve close collaboration between the professionals and amateurs involved, and occupy scientific niches not easily filled by great observatories or machine learning methods: citizen astronomers are most strongly motivated by being of service to science. In the coming years we expect participation and productivity in citizen astronomy to increase, as survey datasets get larger and citizen science platforms become more efficient. Opportunities include engaging the public in ever more advanced analyses, and facilitating citizen-led enquiry by designing professional user interfaces and analysis tools with citizens in mind.

In progress. The most up to date PDF file should be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/CitizenAstronomyReview . We invite feedback via github issues at http://tinyurl.com/CitizenAstronomyReviewFeedback, and aim to submit to ARAA on September 26

References in corpus (18)

• Rotation-invariant convolutional neural networks for galaxy morphology prediction
• Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment
• The Fundamental Properties of Galaxies and a New Galaxy Classification System
• The variability of crater identification among expert and community crater analysts
• In the Shadow of the Transiting Disk: Imaging epsilon Aurigae in Eclipse
• Galaxy Zoo: The large-scale spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Terrestrial Planet in a ~1 AU Orbit Around One Member of a ~15 AU Binary
• Detection of a transit by the planetary companion of HD 80606
• Radio-to-UV monitoring of AO 0235+164 by the WEBT and Swift during the 2006--2007 outburst
• The Milky Way Project: Leveraging Citizen Science and Machine Learning to Detect Interstellar Bubbles
• The impact of a large object with Jupiter in July 2009
• Galaxy Zoo: Chiral correlation function of galaxy spins
• Jovian Temperature and Cloud Variability during the 2009-2010 Fade of the South Equatorial Belt
• The Ultraviolet Attenuation Law in Backlit Spiral Galaxies
• Gravitational lens modelling in a citizen science context
• GALEX J194419.33+491257.0: An Unusually Active SU UMa-Type Dwarf Nova with a Very Short Orbital Period in the Kepler Data
• The Venus ground-based image Active Archive: a database of amateur observations of Venus in ultraviolet and infrared light
• Testing the rotating lighthouse model with the double pulsar system PSR J0737-3039A/B

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Science with e-ASTROGAM (A space mission for MeV-GeV gamma-ray astrophysics)
• Deep Convolutional Neural Networks as strong gravitational lens detectors
• LensExtractor: A Convolutional Neural Network in Search of Strong Gravitational Lenses
• COSMOGRAIL: the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses XV. Assessing the achievability and precision of time-delay measurements
• Utilizing Small Telescopes Operated by Citizen Scientists for Transiting Exoplanet Follow-up
• Radio Galaxy Zoo: Machine learning for radio source host galaxy cross-identification
• A transient search using combined human and machine classifications
• Support Vector Machine classification of strong gravitational lenses
• The Roles of Astronomers in the Astronomy Education Ecosystem: A Research-Based Perspective
• The Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory (PVOL) and its integration into the Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access (VESPA)
• Planet Four: Terrains - Discovery of Araneiforms Outside of the South Polar Layered Deposits
• Euclid: The Early Release Observations Lens Search Experiment
• Detection of Strongly Lensed Arcs in Galaxy Clusters with Transformers
• The CosmoQuest Moon Mappers Community Science Project: The Effect of Incidence Angle on the Lunar Surface Crater Distribution
• Tracking galaxy evolution through low frequency radio continuum observations using SKA and Citizen-science Research using Multi-wavelength data
• Solar Jet Hunter: a citizen science initiative to identify coronal jets in EUV data sets
• Citizen science for social physics: Digital tools and participation
• Jovian Vortex Hunter: a citizen science project to study Jupiter's vortices
• A citizen science exploration of the X-ray transient sky using the EXTraS science gateway