Forums / General Discussion Forums / Team Organization / Brainstorming Team Ideas
Brainstorming Team Ideas
At the 2nd workshop the CS staff and members of the advisory panel brainstormed some team ideas. Here is a list, crudely deciphered from a collection of hand- and ipad-written notes from Brian, Rebecca and Aaron. These are open ideas for any team to adopt. If something interests you, feel free to ask more about it or just to state that you'd be interested in leading or participating on a team working on that idea.
- Novae searching with DSLRs
- Build database of Fourier coefficients for Miras (note: this team has already been started and is active)
- Short period evolutionary changes of Miras
- Look for flares in red stars using data from the AAVSO International Database (AID)
- Look for trends in discrepant data in the AID
- There are lots of under-analyzed stars in the AAVSO. A team could adopt some of these stars and do some basic research to characterize them (period, amplitude, changes in both over time, historical records, etc.). The AAVSO has a list we can share with teams.
- Looking for variables in the public Kepler data
- Expand and maintain the epsilon Aurigae Wikipedia page
- Tutorials on doing spectroscopy of bright stars
- Update VSX - VSX is our main database of variable stars. It includes parameters of stars such as their brightness range and periods. However, much of the parameters are from older publications (sometimes over a century old!) and need to be updated. VStar can be used to go through sets of stars and update these values, which will help other astronomers do population studies and/or plan observations.
The following is a sample of current teams that are currently active:
- VStar Software Development: Development of the VStar data analysis package. It needs people to test the software and/or help write documentation.
- Southern Gems: They just published a 10-Star Tutorial for the southern hemisphere and are planning new projects.
- Aesthetic Solutions: They create some of the scientifically-accurate illustrations used to describe the epsilon Aurigae system and are assisting the VStar team with user interface design.
- DSLR Documentation & Reduction: They are putting the finishing touches on an awesome DSLR photometry tutorial.
- Historical Perspectives: They are preparing a paper about the historical observations of epsilon Aurigae, perhaps focusing on the technological changes over the years.
- Astronomers Without Telescopes: This is a new team focused on using robotic telescope systems.
- Mark I Eyeball Team: This team is attempting to statistically determine the precision and accuracy of visual observations.
So what other ideas do you have? Post them to this forum. No idea is too easy or too difficult to discuss!
I am very interested in this topic and would be willing to start a group. I'm happy to coordinate it but will need some technical expertise. Does anyone feel like joining in? I'll do some investigation in the mean time. -- Carol
Hi Carol, Yeah, would like to help out on this. I'm already doing some stuff on Zooniverse with their data from Kepler....Planet Hunters have been sifting thru data to help classify exoplanet transists. Pretty interesting stuff. Let me know. Thanks - Christian
Hi In the Mira team, we will be looking at using the "Fast Chi squared" algorithm for automatic lightcurve analysis: http://public.lanl.gov/palmer/fastchi.html I'm nit familiar with Kepler data formats/analysis, but if you look at the reference implementation of that algorithm, you'll see that the test script that is included in the tar ball actually crunches Hipparchos data :-), so at least at first sight it looks like made for the job. Good luck for the Kepler analysis HB
The Director of the AAVSO, Arne Henden, has a personal list of small-to-large variable star related projects he's been building up over his decades in astronomy. He's going to edit the list over the weekend and post it here. So come back next week for a long list of even more ideas! Update: The list is here.
Why don't you post another forum topic outlining your interest and asking for other participants? I'll see if I can find a Kepler expert to provide some quick advice. We certainly don't want to duplicate what other groups (like ZooUniverse) are doing. However, other groups are usually interested in using volunteers to classify things quickly. Our teams are more oriented towards doing a full research project. So it is much more than looking at light curves. It will involve background research, analysis of the data, coming up with hypothesis' and writing up the results. All of which we can help you with.
Christian, Outstanding. I had another person contact me yesterday. With 3 of us I think we can get going. I'm also participating in Zoo Universe. I've been looking at some of the data as I've been classifying. I noticed in a few PlanetHunters.org discussions that someone is providing AAVSO links. Let me go back and see if I can find out who that is. I personally don't know how to identify a PlanetHunter ID number to an AAVSO ID. Do you? I'll also setup a separate group here for us so that we can move this discussion to its own area. Carol
Perfect. I have told the Zoo Universe folks that I want to get into the research more. So the AAVSO perspective is a perfect compliment to our classifying work over there. And I'll setup a new group here for this.
We've started a Kepler team athttp://www.citizensky.org/teams/kepler-variables. If you are interested head over there and send a request to join. Carol
Sounds good :) I just submitted my request to join. Nope, I sure don't know how to link the ID's.
Cool! Imay be able to help with this. Make a list of IDs that you need cross referenced with the AAVSO/Citizen Sky and then contact me when you need them. I'll see what I can do to get you the AAVSO/Citizen Sky IDs.
Hi, all! I've just discovered Citizen Sky a couple days ago. Unfortunately it has been rainy since I came across this project *sad face* so I haven't been able to do any observations. That being said, I would be interested in starting/joining a team for doing basic reasearch to characterize some of these under-analyzed stars. If no one else is interested, I would be fine doing it myself, as long as I have access to some advice from a professional. I don't have any experience with real astronomy, but I have a good physics background. Thanks, Chase P.S. Oh dear, didn't mean for this to post three times. Please ignore the duplicates.
Hi! It's amazing what you can do with a DSLR, even using a simple setup. For example, I recently aimed my DSLR at a region of Cassiopeia, using a setup quite like the one I use for eps Aur, from a location within a city: - Olympus E 420 DSLR (a cheap one) - tripod, unguided - 50 mm F/1.4 lens (an old one from analog days) - ISO 800 A stack of 7 x 5 s exposures just barely captured what I think is Mira star V667 Cas which must have been around 10 mag at that moment : 1:1 crop: 
OK, the S/N is not good enough to do really good photometry with 0.01mag precision like people do with bright stars like eps Aur, but it's enough detect stuff of around 10 mag even in wide field exposures under a not-so-dark sky. Might be useful for school projects etc. CS HBE
Hi Heinz, That is very cool. I think maybe it could be useful for school projects. Joan<!--Session data-->
Not just novae, you could possibly find a comet or other moving object with a sustained DSLR sky imaging effort.