Speaker: Franck Marchis, Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute
Title: Stargazing and Beyond: A Global Network of Citizen Astronomers
Time: Friday, Oct 10 at 12:00pm PST
Location: EMS B210
Abstract: Astronomy is a science that inspires everyone, which makes it a great tool for expanding scientific literacy. It also has a uniquely powerful ability to make us aware of Earth’s value and fragility. And by inspiring people to engage in citizen science, astronomy fosters not only scientific research but also collaborative knowledge-building that’s based on a dialogue between experts and amateurs. The Unistellar network is by far the largest network of telescopes and citizen astronomers around the world, with mew than 13,000 digital telescopes in more than 50 countries. This network has collected more than 4,000 scientific observations in 2022 and our citizen astronomers have helped the NASA TESS mission by confirming exoplanets and supported NASA DART by recording the impact live and its aftermath, validating the efficient of the kinetic impactor technique to protect humanity against the threat of asteroid impacts. We present here some of the key scientific results achieved in 2021-2025 in planetary science, and future developments in education to make astronomy, easier, fun, and accessible, but also more inclusive and accessible. With the connected and decentralized platform SkyMapper, we propose to accelerate research space and popularize it by inviting people who own a telescope to be part of space exploration.
