.astronomy8 Second Morning Session

Ali Swanson - Citizen Science with the Zooniverse: turning data into discovery

People are uniquely capable of classification.

Anyone can participate; many different people contribute, then engage in a broader conversation.

Snapshot Serengeti: 1 million classifications in first 3 days.  Took 6 months of a full-time developer to set up.  See below for how to DIY more easily!

By not allowing "I don't know" as an answer to what animal is in an image, can identify images with unknown animals as those where people's answers vary wildly.  Populace agrees with experts 97% of the time; experts with experts 98% of the time; half of the disagreement is on cases experts called 'unclassifiable'.

Zooniverse Project Builder: DIY projects!  www.zooniverse.org/lab

Break complex tasks down into single steps (as easy as, swipe left or swipe right!).

Data (images) hosted on Amazon S3, though not necessarily Zooniverse's Amazon S3.


James Gilbert - Gaffa tape and string: Professional hardware hacking (in astronomy)

What makes a hack a hack?  A need for results but a lack of time.  E.g. funding proposal deadlines.

Worked at AAO & Oxford on multiobject spectroscopy.
* Starbug w/vacuum suction proceeded only after a proof of concept hack was demonstrated.
* Echidna spines demonstrated just in time.

Managers - don't be afraid of the hack spirit!

 
Geert Barentsen - Open Science with K2

Open science is the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society. -Wikipedia.   Such a society might have more understanding of science, and give more support to it.

Using proprietary data as a reward system bears significant costs. We should be able to have more than one paper on the same data or discovery.

Don't fear your colleagues; fear a lack of public support for science.

Kepler got rid of its proprietary data period.  Currently running with K2.  Data available 2 hours after downlink.  K2 is a hack that uses photon pressure to keep the spacecraft pointing stable (though only along the ecliptic, and only for ~80 days at a time per field).  K2 funds ($10-150k) to do the same science.  Large programs required to release value-added data and software.  Early-career researchers benefit the most from K2's openness.  Ranked Excellent in all 3 categories in NASA senior review.  NASA's TESS will have open data from day one.