European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: Space Apps Challenge

NASA, governments around the world and civil society organizations will co-host the International Space Apps Challenge on April 21-22 with events across seven continents and in space.

The apps competition will bring people together to exploit openly available data collected by space agencies around the world to create innovative solutions to longstanding global challenges. An initiative of the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan, the challenge will showcase the impact scientists and citizens can have by working together to solve challenging problems that affect every person on Earth. Events will take place in San Francisco (USA), Exeter (UK), Melbourne (Australia), São Paulo (Brasil), Nairobi (Kenya), Jakarta (Indonesia), Tokyo (Japan), McMurdo Station (Antarctica) and at the International Space Station.(learn more)

Source: code.NASA

The NASA Open Government Initiative has launched a new website to expand the agency's open source software development.

Open source development, which invites the public access to view and improve software source code, is transforming the way software is created, improved and used. NASA uses open source code to address project and mission needs, accelerate software development and maximize public awareness and impact of research.

"The site represents a natural extension of NASA's efforts to inform, educate and include the public in our mission to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research," said Deborah Diaz, NASA's Deputy Chief Information Officer. "Citizen involvement in our work is a critical component of our success."

NASA Open Government launched the new site as part of its Open Source Software Flagship Initiative with the goal showcasing existing projects, providing a forum for discussion, and guiding internal and external groups in open development, release and contribution.

"We released the site on Jan. 4 and since have received an overwhelming response from people interested in using our code," said Nick Skytland, Program Manager of NASA's Open Government Initiative. "Our goal is to provide the public direct and ongoing access to NASA technology."

"We believe tomorrow's space and science systems will be built in the open, and that code.nasa.gov will play a big part in getting us there," said William Eshagh, NASA Open Government co-lead on the project at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. (learn more)

Zooniverse team has announced the addition of Kepler Quarter 3  (Q3) data to the interface at www.planethunters.org.  This means that there are an additional ~90 days worth of Kepler observations for you to sort through, nearly doubling what they had before - meaning you should be able to find longer period planets hidden in the data. There is still some Quarter 2 data left to search through, and the site will be showing a mix of the two quarters.

This is great news for all planet hunters that have been cooperating with the project of finding planets around other stars. (go to Planet Hunters)

Source: NASA News

NASA is announcing the International Space Apps Competition to support the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which President Barack Obama announced Tuesday. The challenge will culminate with a two-day event next year that will provide an opportunity for government to use the expertise and entrepreneurial spirit of citizen explorers to help address global challenges.

During the event, NASA representatives and officials from international space agencies will gather with scientists and citizens to use publicly-released scientific data to create solutions for issues, such as weather impact on the global economy and depletion of ocean resources. (read more)

Source: University of Toronto

Astronomers usually only see flat versions of the real galaxies in the Universe, as pictures projected on their computer screens. But  researchers in the international collaboration ATLAS3D have used a clever trick to figure out what 260 galaxies do in the third dimension missing from their images.

They added motion to the picture by measuring the velocities of stars going through the plane of the image. Using this method, the ATLAS3D researchers were able to tell whether stars were part of a flattened spinning disk or a motionless balloon-shaped blob (called elliptical galaxy).

This advance should help them figure out how galaxies change as they age and collide with one another. (read more)

Source: ESA

ESA Application for iPhone and iPad. Image credit: ESA.

Space in your pocket…and also on your tablet! The new ESA iPhone or iPad application, or ‘App’, can now deliver a wealth of information on ESA missions, videos, images and news updates, at your fingertips. (read more)

A sinuous channel on the Moon. Credit: Moon Zoo.

We present you a new online tool for astronomy education (and more). As everybody knows Zooniverse has been releasing a lot of software tools that can be used by everybody and that might help develop student awareness to astronomy issues and also help you develop new projects with your students. They have now released Moon Zoo a new tool that you can use.

The aim of Moon Zoo is to provide detailed crater counts for as much of the Moon's surface as possible. Unlike here on Earth where weather quickly erodes any signs of all but the most recent impacts, craters on the lunar surface stay almost until eternity. That means that the number of craters on a particular piece of the surface tells us how old it is. This technique is used all over the Solar System, but the Moon is particularly important because we have ground truth — samples brought back by the Apollo missions — which allow us to calibrate our estimates. Planetary scientists have always carried out this kind of analysis on large scales, but with your help and the fabulous LRO images then we should be able to uncover the finer details of the Moon's history.

Craters can tell us more than just the history of the lunar surface though. In particular, you're asked in Moon Zoo to look for craters with boulders around the rim. Boulders are a sign that the impact was powerful enough that it excavated rock from beneath the regolith (the lunar 'soil') and so by keeping an eye out for these we can begin to map the depth of the regolith across the surface of the Moon.

The Moon is perhaps the most familiar object in the night sky, but it still has its mysteries. Following the excitement of the Apollo Moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s, a new flotilla of spacecraft is exploring the Earth's nearest neighbour. The images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which you're invited to explore with Moon Zoo show the lunar surface in remarkable detail, including features as small as 50 cm (about one and a half feet) across.

LRO is a remarkable spacecraft, the product of years of hard work by an enormous team of scientists and engineers who made the mission possible. It carries, amongst other instruments, an incredible camera,  LROC . LROC is actually three cameras — two Narrow Angle Cameras which supply Moon Zoo images, and a Wide Angle Camera. Data from the first six months of the mission have been released by the LROC team through the Planetary Data System (PDS), but the project promises more.

Link:
Moon Zoo site

Source: ESA/Hubble

Image Credit:ESA/Victor R. Ruiz

Access a universe of knowledge about the Universe with three new free iPad apps from ESO’s education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD), available just in time for the iPad 2.

Together with the European Space Agency (ESA), ePOD has launched the free ESA/Hubble Top 100 Images app, which brings users the best Hubble pictures from ESA, as NASA’s partner in this international project.(read more)

Related links:
ESO ann11012 - Announcement

Source: Planet Hunters

Screenshot of Planet Hunters website

Ever dreamed of being the first to make a discovery? Want to find a planet of your own? Thanks to http://www.planethunters.org, the latest Zooniverse project, you might just be able to, using data from NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler's goal is to catch the slight dip in brightness that's caused by a planet passing in front of its parent star.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is one of the most powerful tools in the hunt for extrasolar planets. The Kepler Team computers are sifting through the data, but we at Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition.

The Kepler Team computers are sifting through the data, but we at Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition. This is a gamble, a bet, if you will, on the ability of humans to beat machines just occasionally - and for us to have a chance we need your help. Fancy giving it a try? If you do, you could be the first to spot an new planet – it may be a Jupiter-size behemoth or even an Earth-sized rock.  (go to PlanetHunters Project)

Source: ESA Space Science News

New software developed by ESA makes available online to everyone, everywhere at anytime, the entire library of images from the SOHO solar and heliospheric observatory. Just download the viewer and begin exploring the Sun.

A screenshot from the program JHelioviewer, developed by ESA.
Image credits: ESA JHelioviewer Team

Helioviewer is new visualisation software that enables everyone to explore the Sun. Developed as part of the ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project, it provides a desktop program that enables users to call up images of the Sun from the past 15 years. More than a million images from SOHO can already be accessed, and new images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory are being added every day. The downloadable JHelioviewer is complemented by the website Helioviewer.org, a web-based image browser.

Helioviewer is new visualisation software that enables everyone to explore the Sun. Developed as part of the ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project, it provides a desktop program that enables users to call up images of the Sun from the past 15 years. More than a million images from SOHO can already be accessed, and new images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory are being added every day. The downloadable JHelioviewer is complemented by the website Helioviewer.org, a web-based image browser.

Another  screenshot from the program JHelioviewer, developed by ESA.
Image credits: ESA JHelioviewer Team

JHelioviewer is written in the Java programming language, hence the ‘J’ at the beginning of its name. It is open-source software, meaning that all its components are freely available so others can help to improve the program. The code can even be reused for other purposes; it is already being used for Mars data and in medical research. This is because JHelioviewer does not need to download entire datasets, which can often be huge – it can just choose enough data to stream smoothly over the Internet.  (read more)

Virtual Moon Atlas is a software developed by Patrick Chevalley and Christian Legrand that allows you to visualize the Moon at any date and hour and can also be used to drive computerized telescopes to explore the Moon surface. The authors have made the software free for amateur astronomers, lunar observers and students who wish to practice selenography. The “Virtual Moon Atlas” is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

A screenshot from Virtual Moon Atlas

This software is the result of a collaboration between Christian Legrand, a passioned lunar observer, and co-author of the guide "Discover the Moon" published in English by Cambridge University Press and also published in French, German and Spanish, with Patrick Chevalley, author of the freeware "Cartes du Ciel / Sky Charts".

When the authors conceived the software they thought about something that could be easily used in astronomical observations, but also that could also be used at home to learn more about the Moon and its surface. It's interfaced with Patrick Chevalley's freeware "Sky Charts" which is also a good software to use with students.

This software can be used with students to study lunar formations just by clicking over a specific structure on the screen's lunar surface. It has a very big database that was compiled by Christian Legrand where one can find more than 9000 entries and a pictures library that has more than 7000 images.

The software allows the inversion of the Moon's image in N-S and E-W directions allowing to preview the exact image that is expected to be seen on the telescope.

A screenshot from the same view of the Moon on Virtual Moon Atlas but on a telescope with an inversion N-S.

It is possible to choose the language used by the software and database. To know more about the program follow the authors sugestion and read the complete manual or the quick user's guide or to look at the screens copies to see what are the possibilities.

A fantastic software...

Links:
Virtual Moon Atlas webpage
Virtual Moon Atlas download
Virtual Moon Atlas translations of the software

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors because it is a free software planetarium, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It uses OpenGL to render a realistic sky in real time. With Stellarium, it's possible to see what one cannot see with the naked eye, binoculars or a small telescope. This is a very nice tool to use with your students in classroom and in night-time observations preparation. One can see past, present and future events like eclipses, Venus and Mercury transits or even reproduce Galileo's observations about Jupiter's moons.

A screenshot of Stellarium

Stellarium is developed by the French programmer Fabien Chéreau, who launched the project in the summer of 2001. Other developers include Robert Spearman, Johannes Gajdosik, Matthew Gates, Nigel Kerr and Johan Meuris. John Meuris is responsible for most of the the artwork done with the constellations and landscapes.

Stellarium was featured on SourceForge in May 2006 as Project of the Month.

Links:

Stellarium webpage