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ISS and variable star observations
Hi all!
I wonder... now that the ISS has a room with a view, the crew could do some variable star observations, couldn't they? Maybe reserve some observer codes ISSx for them :-)
Seriously, I think it would be wonderful if one of the broadcasts from ISS that are meant to inspire people to get involved with space sciences could mention variable star observation and citizen science projects like this one. Even the fact of a symbolic AAVSO observation made from ISS would be a cool opportunity for a little news item.
Anyone with close links to NASA, perhaps ?
CS
Heinz
Aaron, Might not SAO have a contact, via one of their project supervisors? David.
The issue isn't having contacts per se, but having the right one. NASA is a giant organization. Almost everyone in astronomy knows lots of folks there (including myself). But finding the right person to process this request has been challenging. But I think I finally did it! Today I'm inD.C. at an NSF informal science education conference and Iwas introduced to a NASA representative who gave me two avenues of pursuit. Apparently there are indeed official channels you can pursue to get educational access to the ISS. However, they are competitive and they actually cost money. So I don't know if we can do this. I am going to pursue it, though. And I'll post an update to this forum when I have one!
Hi,Heinz! We actually did pursue something like this. Shortly after the AAS meeting, Brian Kloppenborg and I were brainstorming solutions to the problem caused by the sun interfering with the predicted timing of the mid-eclipse brightening (if it exists). We thought about asking an astronaut on the ISSto just "look out the window" sometime in the summer and making an estimate for us. Dr. Bob then suggested we go further and ask them to take a picture. So I asked some friends with contacts at NASA for recommendations and feasibility. Most ppl's comments were along the line of "great idea, but you'll be lucky to get any astronaut time because you have to go through lots of hoops and beaurocracy." For example, we'd need to calculate the angle of the Sun at a specific time/place in orbit, etc. About six weeks ago we started e-mailing people in a position to get the ball moving. We wanted to try to get ahold of one of the astronauts before the recent shuttle launch. One person told me that the astronauts personally would love to do something like this because they are research oriented and love to do new things. But we were unable to get any responses from our e-mails to NASA folk. I think it's simply a problem of people being too busy to read e-mails from strangers with strange ideas. On January 22, I even went so far as trying to tweet a message to the ISS mentioning the idea. It was a long shot. I'm sure they get thousands of tweets a day and our idea is too complicated for 40 characters. :) If we could get someone to actually chat with us about it, I bet we could get this idea through. It's a fantastic opportunity for NASA to get some cool PR. It's something easy that only astronauts can do, with their eyeballs, using a new piece of equipment just launched and it would take very little time. Also, it's part of a government funded citizen science/informal education project. And it would help answer a key scientific question about epsilonAurigae! Epic wins all around. We'll continue to ask around, but I'm not confident that we'll be able to break through the beaurocracy to speak with someone. But if anyone reading this has any contacts at NASA or advice, help us out. This would be way cool!