I'm looking forward to hosting a live talk this June 6 on the use of our internet-connected smart telescopes to conduct citizen science at our 93-year-old astronomical society, which has had a rich history of citizen science. The smart telescope adoption at our club, took a few years to nurture and guide at our club, and it has now enabled a streak of national high school service awards from the Astronomical League, and quite a few mission results to talk about! So I'll be sharing some of those results of how we got there, and will offer some tips for other club members on how to utilize these telescopes to engage membership, the public, and foster a community of citizen science at your club or household. I'll include some options for people with no smart telescopes as well, so I think it'll be a nice talk covering a bit of ground, some of which is discussed on these forums. Citizen science is often the least talked about benefit to smart telescopes, and the Unistellar smart telescopes are the strongest option for observatories to engage and access this network of citizen scientists as well as SETI researchers supporting a collaboartive research environment.
I'm the president the Milwaukee Astronomical Society, and with hundreds of citizen science missions behind me, I've been using the Unistellar eVscopes since a kickstarter campaign by the SETI Institute in 2020, to gather data on astronomical events such as: exoplanet transits; asteroid occultations; artificial satellite tracking, variable star measurements, cometary data collection, near-earth asteroid modelling and a variety of other fun topics, including the citizen science confirmation of NASA's smash D.A.R.T mission success. As I've found, during the process of advocating for and obtaining two Unistellar eVscopes at the society, the smart telescope model makes onboardng into this research easiest for youth, lazy astronomers like myself and enthusiastic members of the public who quickly become hooked on data collection. Due to the support by Unistellar for this feature, it sets this smart telescope manufacturer apart from the field and I'll look forward to sharing how this benefits our community.
You can access the live talk via Explore Scientific's Live link: https://www.explores...tific.com/live
Or you can also go to facebook.com/astronomical.league
Have a look at the video I collected from last night here: https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing
Stay tuned until half way in to see the satellite pass through the screen at a measured magnitude in this observation was 9.628+/-0.127!
It was pretty exciting to see the satellite go directly through the center of the observing window at the right time. I was aware of a satellite up for observation that night, Satellite Cosmos 2553, which is believed to be tumbling out of control. The data gathered by observers like myself, helps scientists calculate path, trajectory and brightness. The data I gathered was also uploaded to the SETI + Unistellar collaborative network, we use our telescopes to track satellites - as per their webpage: https://science.unis...com/satellites/ - In the past decade, the number of active satellites in low-Earth orbit has jumped from 1,200 to 9,900. With the increased speed at which satellites are being launched into orbit, it has been predicted that as many as 60,000 satellites could exist in low-Earth orbit by the end of the decade.
If you have any questions, post here and I can try to cover. One area I won't go too deep about is exactly how each mission type is done, due to the wide audience potentially watching, but I'd welcome any questions I could prepare for ahead of the meeting if you have some! My topic will mostly focus on some fun results, the benefit of the technology for your local club membership, the value for youth astronomers in high school and increasing club outreach and awareness of observing via topics other than just astrophotography with these amazing 4.5in connected telescope reflectors. I will also plan to share some ideas for how to engage your club members in the activities.
