Astronomers and astrophysicists from across the country visited Boise State University on Friday, Oct. 3, to speak at Stellar Collective, a citizen science conference designed to engage the public in astronomy research and make science accessible for everyone.
Hosted in conjunction with the Boise State Department of Physics and Unistellar, a telescope and astronomical research company, the conference featured scientists whose research welcomes anyone interested in astronomy to participate and learn more about the universe.
“The projects they’re talking about don’t require fancy equipment or a PhD to work on,” said Arianna Japalucci, project manager for Stellar Collective and a senior studying astrophysics. “You can just do it from home, and all you really need is a curious mind. We just want people to know that there’s a place for them in science.”
Speakers at the conference covered a variety of space-related topics.
Dr. Franck Marchis, Chief Science Officer at Unistellar, spoke about a program he founded called Skymapper, a global telescope network that allows citizen astronomers to share what they see on their Unistellar telescopes directly with scientists.
The web of telescopes participating in Skymapper has the potential to allow scientists to view the sky from anywhere in the world at any time. Marchis demonstrated the scientific benefits of this with an example: by using dozens of telescopes across France that were in view of an asteroid occultation, researchers at Skymapper were able to determine the specific shape of a distant asteroid. One user’s telescope was even able to determine the asteroid had a large crater, showing how the program allows regular skywatchers to make significant contributions to science.
Dr. Patrick Treuthardt, Assistant Head of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, spoke about a program he started called Spiral Graph, which asked the public to help trace the shape of thousands of distant galaxies so scientists can learn more about how spiral galaxies form.
Cluster Buster was so successful that Treuthardt and his team turned their attention to the next phase of the project: Cluster Buster, a program that invites the public to verify if the galaxies from the Spiral Graph project are traced correctly.
Dr. Lauren Sgro’s presentation topic would catch anyone’s attention — aliens.
Sgro is a postdoctoral fellow at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute. She spoke about the program LaserSETI, which searches for extraterrestrial pulses across the universe and points scientists toward potential advanced civilizations on other planets.
“We want to try to help shape public opinion that this is real science, that we’re not just a bunch of crazy people looking for UFOs, because that doesn’t help anybody,” Sgro said in an interview with The Arbiter. “There are actual observatories, there are real searches that are being done. If people can take that away, then they can then have more informed conversations with other people in their lives about what that looks like.”
Sgro explained finding life on other planets would help researchers learn more about where humans come from and how life forms.
“It would open up an entirely new field, biologically, chemically — not just astronomically,” Sgro said. “It would be scientifically valuable across all of the sciences.”
Sgro emphasized the importance of citizen science events and inviting the public to participate in scientific projects in whatever way they can.
“Science is a part of life,” she said. “In order to reconnect people with that wonder of ‘How do things work?’, it’s important to show them they can be part of the process of figuring out how things work.”
“Once we expand our minds and realize that we’re part of something bigger, our motives and how we approach life are different, and we’re more concerned with the whole and trying to improve the betterment of mankind,” she added.
The conference also allowed Boise State students to share their own scientific findings with visitors. Addison Hobson, a senior studying physics, shared a project she worked on over the summer as part of a research experience at Montana State University. Hobson studied how the temperature of the site in Montana affected underground equipment that measures magnetic field fluctuations associated with geomagnetic storms.
Hobson explained that Stellar Collective was a great opportunity to share her work, and the mission of the conference was important to the scientific community.
“This is a super important thing to have for our community here, because often science seems really daunting to a lot of people,” Hobson said. “You see all of these geniuses doing science, and you’re like, ‘I can’t do that.’ But in actuality, it’s so much simpler than people think, and it’s not nearly as hard to get into as people think. All you need is curiosity.”
