News

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

Hi, all. The second year of Citizen Sky has just begun. Here are some of the things we have afoot...

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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Not to bump Rebecca's blog post about applications for the second Citizen Sky workshop, but I thought I would highlight that Mike Simonsen posted a podcast interview in which Rebecca was interviewed about the Citizen Sky project.  Head over to SlackerAstronomy to check it out.

We've just posted a new tool on the Citizen Sky web site.  Created by colleagues from Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, the epsilon Aurigae Simulator allows the user to manipulate various parameters of the system and view the resulting lightcurve.

Brian has written a tutorial, which offers a quick introduction to the simulator.  This is a great chance to read up on all of the recent results on eps Aur and use them to model your own version of the system.  Have fun!

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The chat transcript to the January 12, 2010 chat discussing the remaining questions after the exciting press releases at the AAS meeting is attached as a pdf document to this blog posting.  It was really an exciting chat with several good questions being asked!  The original chat advertisement follows:Read more

Citizen Sky has issued a press release (in english and espanol) with an update on the project and including new artwork (including one image created by the aesthetic solutions team). This is being  released at the Jan. 3-7 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, billed as the largest meeting of astronomers ever. Citizen Sky will be well represented there through posters, talks and press conferences. We will also be wandering the halls looking for neat news updates to bring you regarding epsilon Aurigae and other astrophysical phenomenon. Stay tuned during the week for  reports!

And don't forget to continue your observations!Read more

Hello Citizen Skyers!

It has been a while, so I thought I’d update everyone on a few components of the Citizen Sky Project...

The eclipse is now well underway and Dr. Bob has been doing a great job keeping us updated on all of the "ins and outs" of the decline.  If you haven't already, read Dr. Bob's blog posts for the latest on the eclipse! Read more

The chat transcript to our Nov. 18 online Beginner's Chat has been posted.  The chat was for those Citizen Sky participants who are relatively new to astronomy and/or the Citizen Sky project. Below is the original announcement:

Everyone is invited to an online "Beginners' Chat" to be held this Wednesday, November 18 at 8 pm Eastern (7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, 5 pm Pacific).  The goal of the chat is to answer questions about Citizen Sky, epsilon Aurigae, and/or astronomy in general. The tone will be tailored to new participants in the project so this is a great chance to find out more about the project without feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the project.Read more