Citizen Sky needs citizen scientists

There’s a mystery in the night sky that you can help solve. Every 27 years, in the constellation called Auriga (the charioteer), a bright star designated epsilon goes dim for nearly two years. Epsilon Aurigae is a “binary eclipsing variable star,” which is astronomer-speak for a star that appears to change brightness as an orbiting … Read more “Citizen Sky needs citizen scientists”

Categories: Astronomy & Space, Citizen Science, Science Education Standards

Snail sleuth wins BBC amateur scientist contest

Ruth Brooks, a gardener with a soft spot for snails, has just won the BBC’s “So You Want to Be a Scientist?” contest. You may recall that she was our favorite when we reported in April on the four finalists for the contest. Brooks’s ground-breaking (if slow) project showed that, contrary to what many scientists … Read more “Snail sleuth wins BBC amateur scientist contest”

Categories: Animals, Biology, Citizen Science, Contest, In the News, Nature & Outdoors

Picture Post: the art of citizen science

Sometimes, science is the happy companion of art. Take Spiral Jetty, a piece by the late sculptor Robert Smithson. In 1970, Smithson arranged 6,650 tons of basalt boulders into a spiral that reaches 1,500 feet into the Great Salt Lake. Built during a drought, the stony coil soon disappeared beneath the lake’s rising, algae-reddened waters. … Read more “Picture Post: the art of citizen science”

Categories: Citizen Science, Climate & Weather, Ecology & Environment

A webcam for things that go bump in the night

If you like Phoebe Allens, the famous Allen’s hummingbird whose comings and goings are video-recorded in a southern California yard, then you should know about The Animal Detector. The Animal Detector is a video blog devoted to the nocturnal critters that visit the backyard of University of North Carolina developmental biologist Bob Goldstein. One night … Read more “A webcam for things that go bump in the night”

Categories: Animals, Birds

Game on for volunteer protein folders

The child you scold for spending so much time on World of Warcraft? That kid could turn out to be a biochemist’s dream. According to University of Washington researchers who run an online game—sorry—an online science project called Foldit, players can beat computer algorithms at solving one of science’s toughest problems: How to fold a … Read more “Game on for volunteer protein folders”

Categories: Biology, Chemistry, Citizen Science, Computers & Technology

Got ants? Citizen scientists do

“Everybody have ants?” That’s Kelly Herbinson, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, training high school students in the art of collecting ants for the Bay Area Ant Survey, one of the Academy’s citizen science projects. (You’ll find a description in our Project Finder.) The project and the problem ant that participants most often … Read more “Got ants? Citizen scientists do”

Categories: Citizen Science, Insects

Time-lapse film captures a year of sky

One of the many jewels in San Francisco’s crown is the Exploratorium, a hands-on museum where creativity and science collide in ever more imaginative ways. And among the imaginative projects the museum has backed recently is artist-programmer-musician Ken Murphy’s film, A History of the Sky. Murphy, an Exploratorium artist in residence, is creating a time-lapse … Read more “Time-lapse film captures a year of sky”

Categories: Citizen Science, Climate & Weather, Computers & Technology

Science volunteers give endangered butterfly a new start

One of the loveliest butterflies in the San Francisco Bay Area is the mission blue. Hikers who venture south of the city to San Bruno Mountain or north to the Marin Headlands are sometimes lucky enough to encounter the iridescent, inch-wide insect (as I did a couple of weekends ago). But the butterfly, an endangered … Read more “Science volunteers give endangered butterfly a new start”

Categories: Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Insects, Nature & Outdoors