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teams
Artists Needed for... art!
We are looking for a few good artists... or one would do, actually. We have a press release prepared and ready to be published as soon as the powers-that-be finish filling out some paperwork. However, we don't have an illustration or a logo to describe epsilon Aurigae or our project. Read this post in our forums for how to help!Read more
Form your Teams!
I am happy to announce that the first phase of the Team section of the Citizen Sky website is now up and running!
You can start your own team or join an existing team. (You can search existing teams by keyword or see a list of all teams.) Team leaders have the ability to make team membership open to anyone, or if they are looking for something very specific, team leaders can moderate the joining process. Once the team has all of the necessary skills represented in its membership teams can even be closed.
Members of each team have the ability to create team posts. These posts can be public (anyone can read them) or private (only other members of your team can read them.) Read more
Time Sinks for Fun and Profit
As part of the registration process, we asked new participants what they felt would be their biggest challenge in this project. The #1 answer, by far, has been time. So we've put together a table of the amount of time needed for a sampling of roles in the project...Read more
VStar Light Curve Analysis Software is Now Online!
A new, open-source data visualization and analysis tool called VStar is now ready for download. It is the product of a Citizen Sky programming team led by David Benn - VStar Software Development Team. We are very proud of VStar and thank the team for the many, many hours of hard work that have gone into creating this tool.
A brief description, some simple instructions, and a download link are available on the VStar page. Read more
What's on Tap?
The first year of the project was dedicated to training to observe the star and report your observations. We also worked on the site infrastructure. Since the funding came through late, we had to push a lot of what we originally had planned for years 1 and 2 - into year 1 alone. This meant it was a hectic year, but it now means years 2-3 can be at a more leisurely , natural pace.
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VStar Team
The VStar team has done some amazing work in the last year. But they need more help. Read on for an update and how you may be able to contribute.Read more
Start Your Engines...
As the new year rolls around, it's time to start the next phase of the project. Thus far we have focused on data collection, not it's time to focus on the rest of the scientific process...Read more
Thanks for a job well done!
We would like to congratulate one of the very first CS teams to form on a job well done!!
Most of the Citizen Sky teams will form during year 2 of the project and will have research/analysis related goals, but we did have a number of teams form in the first year of the project with non-research goals. One of these, the 20/20 Vision team, formed very early in the project with the goal of introducing its members to the "ins and outs" of visual variable star observing. The team leader, Chris Stephan, did a wonderful job of mentoring dozens of new observers. Through close communication he coached members on selecting equipment, making observations, even doing outreach! The team has decided to shut down now that they have reached their goal of learning the basics. Congratulations on a job well done and a goal successfully met!!Read more
DSLR Photometry Chat Transcript
We will be hosting a Citizen Sky online chat TODAY, March 5th, at 11am Eastern (-5UT). Members of the Citizen Sky DSLR Documentation and Reduction Team will be online to answer questions regarding their work and the article published in the April Issue of Sky & Telescope Magazine. This article, titled "Photometry for All in the Digital Age," was written by team members Brian Kloppenborg and Tom Pearson. It describes the work of the DSLR team and explains that DSLR cameras can be quite effective for bright star photometry.
If you have a digital single-lens reflex camera and would like to know more about how to properly use it for photometry, please stop by with your questions. Read more
VStar 2.12 Released
David Benn and the VStar team also continue to do great work. They have just released version 2.12 of VStar. A download link is here. Background info on VStar is here. Also, don't forget the plugin library which has some neat toys in it!
