Citizen Science for Astronomy - Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association

During the last years we have seen a boom in projects related to Citizen Science. The idea behind these is the active participation of citizens in the process of collection and processing of data where, especially in the field of Astronomy, can be voluminous and way off the handling capabilities of the professionals (particularly when the contribution of a human instead of an automated process is needed). Moreover, the continuous advance of the technology and internet accessibility has offered new capabilities in the interaction of the professionals with the participants.

The HAAA has always been supportive and an advocate of the amateur contribution to the science of Astronomy. Therefore, we created the current page with a goal to collect and highlight all (possible) Citizen Science projects related directly to Astronomy.

In case you have an addition or spot a change (given the dynamic nature of these projects), feel free to suggest it to us below at the comments section and we will include it (along with your name!) in the next update.

Last update: 29 April 2020
Contributors: Grigoris Maravelias, Giorgos Kountouris

Active projects

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9
> discriminate between real celestial objects (brown dwarfs, low-mass stars) and bogus images from the space telescope WISE

COSMIC
> classification of Martian surface featuresστον Άρη

Galaxy Zoo
> galaxy classification with images from Dark Energy Camera, from the ground-based 4m Victor Blanco telescope (Chile)

Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout
> discovering galaxies with clumps

Gravity Spy
> identify gravity waves in LIGO data

HotShots
> discover the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational wave sources

Hubble Asteroid Hunter
> detecting asteroid traces in images form the Hubble space telescope

Local Group Cluster Search
> detecting star clusters in nearby galaxies – Large Magellanic Cloud is left

Planet Four
> detecting and measuring features on the surface of Mars, with images from the HiRISE camera onboard the space mission Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Planet Hunters TESS
> discovering new exoplanets from light curves with data from the space telescope TESS

Project PHaEDRA
> digitization of female astronomers

Radio Galaxy ZOO: LOFAR
> detection of supermassive black holes and starforming galaxies, through radio observations from LOFAR

Radio Meteor Zoo
> data analysis from the radio network BRAMS for meter detection

SCOPE
> stellar spectral classification from photographic plates

Snapshot Supernova
> discovering supernova from images obtained through the 1.m telescope (Siding Spring, Australia)

Solar Stormwatch II
> monitoring solar storms from STEREO images

SuperWASP Variable Stars
> classify variables stars from light curves

Variable Star Zoo
> classification of new variable stars at the Galactic Center from light curves from VVV survey

Zwicky’s Quirky Transients
> distinguish between real and erroneous detections from the Zwicky Transient Facility

Completed projects

Euclid – Challenge the Machines
> modeling images of gravitational lens for observations with the space telescope Euclid

Exoplanet Explorers
> detecting exoplanets from light curves by Kepler K2 mission

Galaxy Builder
> modeling galaxies

Galaxy Nurseries
> detecting galaxies in Hubble images

Milky Way project
> detecting and classifying dusty regions from images from space telescopes Spitzer and WISE

Moon Zoo
> feature detection on Lunar surface from space mission Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter