Citizen Science Stories
An Eclipse Megamovie Megastar
Nazmus “Naz” Nasir is a software engineer by day, and an astrophotographer by night….and sometimes by day as well! This April, Naz participated in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie 2024 project, photographing the total solar eclipse. He posted online a spectacular video composed of stabilized and…
Happy Birthday, Redshift Wrangler!
About one year ago the Redshift Wrangler project first asked you to help examine “spectra” of distant galaxies. These spectra are diagrams that show how much light we receive from them as a function of wavelength. “Since launching on May 30, 2023,…
North Carolina Volunteers Work Toward Cleaner Well Water
When the ground floods during a storm, floodwaters wash bacteria and other contaminants into private wells. But thanks to citizen scientists in North Carolina, we now know a bit more about how to deal with this problem. A new NASA-Funded study describes the…
Mountain Rain or Snow Volunteers Broke Records This Winter
The Mountain Rain or Snow project asks volunteers to track rain, snow, and mixed precipitation all winter long—and this was a winter like no other! This season, 1,684 people submitted precipitation observations—that’s about a third more than last season. These volunteers submitted over 32,110 observations, breaking…
The Moon and Amaey Shah
Sometimes a story about a NASA volunteer just grabs your heart and won’t let go. NASA Scientist Dr. Brian Day shared with us the incredible story of what first ignited his passion for involving the public in his scientific research.…
Arizona Students Go on an Exoplanet Watch
Exoplanets, planets outside of our own solar system, hold the keys to finding extraterrestrial life and understanding the origin of our own world. Now online students at Arizona State University (ASU) in a new course called Exoplanet Research Experience have become exoplanet scientists by…
Discovery Alert: Mini-Neptune in Double Star System is a Planetary Puzzle
The Discovery A planet that could resemble a smaller version of our own Neptune orbits one of two Sun-like stars that also orbit each other. The planet dwells in the “habitable zone,” with a potentially moderate temperature, and poses a…
Aurorasaurus Roars During Historic Solar Storm
The largest geomagnetic storm in 21 years lit up the sky last weekend, and NASA’s volunteers were ready. Between May 10th and 12th 2024, NASA’s Aurorasaurus project received an unprecedented number of reports from around the world. It also helped eager aurora chasers get a better view.
How NASA Tracked the Most Intense Solar Storm in Decades
May 2024 has already proven to be a particularly stormy month for our Sun. During the first full week of May, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields…
NASA Partner Zooniverse Receives White House Open Science Award
Congrats to NASA partner Zooniverse for being named winners in the White House’s Year of Open Science Recognition Challenge! The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) designated 2023 as the year of Open Science, and invited innovators to submit stories of how…