For my work experience, I decided to take part in some of NASA’s Citizen Science projects, as there are no opportunities near me for work experience to do with astrophysics. However, I feel as though I made the right choice as I learned a lot about how to deal with and classify my findings, and how to identify patterns within the data.
I mainly focused on five topics throughout the week;
Identifying radio waves in space
Finding asteroids
Identifying different types of clouds on Mars
Locating vortices on Jupiter
Working out the similarities and difference between types of galaxies
To identify radio waves in space, and find patterns between them, you are asked to answer a series of questions about the photos shown to you on the screen. You are asked questions like identifying the direction of the radio waves, the spacing between the lines and which class you would place the signal in, before getting another picture to repeat the process with. I really enjoyed this project as it made me think about the fact that there are radio signals around space, and it raised the question of whether these are generated by us, or from elsewhere in the universe, and how.
The next project I completed was finding asteroids in space. This one was extremely simple, as you only had to identify if the image had comet-like activity, such as a tail or dust surrounding it, however most images did not have comet-like activity, which therefore means you simply select no, before seeing another picture. I spent quite a bit of time on this project as I am very interested in comets, especially after having seen the C/2022 e3 (ZTF) comet in the early months of the year.
Next, I tried identifying different types of clouds on Mars. This activity was quite tricky, because for each area, it provides you with 4 pictures and you have to locate the arch shapes and click on them, even if they only appear very faintly in one of the photos. Most of the photos looked like this one, which meant there were no arches to be identified…
…however some arches were very clear…
...and others were much more difficult to identify.
This was an interesting project to take part in as I was initially confused as to what I was actually locating, which led me to researching further into this project, as well as the ideas of clouds on Mars and how they are created.
Another project I took part in was locating vortices on Jupiter. For this project, you had to draw a circle around different coloured vortexes in the photos. The hardest part of this task was working out the classifications of the vortices, and which colour circle should be drawn around them, as only some were obvious. Taking part in this was interesting because it helps to demonstrate just how massive this planet actually is, and all the strange and wonderful things that take place within it and on its surface.
Finally I classified different types of galaxies, by answering several questions about the photo shown, for example if any features can be identified, can you see a bar within the galaxy, how many spiral arms can you see within the galaxy, and whether or not it is being disturbed by another galaxy. This project was good because I really enjoyed finding different types of galaxies and identifying their features, as well as seeing galaxies from many thousands of light years away with little data known about them, to galaxies much closer to us that we have clearer images of and much more known data about.
Altogether, I really enjoyed this experience, as it helped me to see what it is like working with data, and having to use knowledge to interpret and identify the differences within it. Whilst some projects were tricky compared to others, I enjoyed these harder ones as much as the more simple ones as they provided instances where I had to try and work out the correct answers using knowledge and prior thoughts on the topic instead of simply writing down what I could see. It was a really beneficial activity that I cannot wait to try again sometime soon!
Comments