Volunteer to Become a NASA Ambassador

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

What kind of ambassador, you ask? Well, NASA is looking for what are called “Partner Eclipse Ambassadors.” Volunteers for this position will assist NASA as it prepares communities for the April 2024 solar eclipse.

NASA promises the following to support volunteer ambassadors:

  • A supportive network of enthusiasts who regularly share eclipse support;
  • A partner in your community (each partnership consists of an undergraduate and an eclipse enthusiast);
  • Materials including solar viewing glasses, activities, handouts, and more;
  • Connections to local community centers reaching underserved audiences;
  • Regular social hours and presentations from experts in eclipses and communication; and
  • Opportunities to continue your journey with NASA through collaborations with partners in heliophysics, education, and communication.

You have plenty of time to prepare for this event, so check it out. You can get all of the details at this link.

Planetary Society’s Day of Action

Posted on by onespaceman2000

On September 17 and 18, the Planetary Society holds its Day of Action to advocate for space issues before Congress.

For those who already registered for the event, they can expect:

  • Online and in-person advocacy training from The Planetary Society’s space policy team;
  • A minimum of three meetings with congressional offices booked for you by The Planetary Society; and
  • Access to special events, social gatherings, and space-themed experiences for you and fellow members while you’re in D.C.

It is too late to sign up for the upcoming event, but you can still assist in other ways such as pledging to take online action:

By pledging, you commit to taking some form of individual advocacy action on the Day of Action. We will email you with a number of opportunities that can be done on your own schedule, including social media posts, prompts to call Congress (if you live in the United States), and online petitions and messages. We will email you updates and background information before the Day of Action itself; no prior training is required.

The Day of Action website has all of the details as well as a video from the 2020 Day of Action, which was on February 10, 2020 or about one month before COVID caused the Congress to abandon the office place. Fortunately, in-person meetings are possible again.

Check it out and see how you can help. Maybe you can attend next year if you missed the window for this year.

Volunteer Opportunity: Astronomer in Residence

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Looking for something to do next summer? How about being the Astronomer in Residence at the Grand Canyon? You can share your love of astronomy with the public on a regular basis. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Here is more information on the position itself:

Grand Canyon Conservancy’s (GCC) Astronomer-in-Residence program supports astronomers and dark-sky advocates from various disciplines that wish to engage with the night skies of Grand Canyon and build connections with the community by sharing their expertise, instruments, and passion with the park’s public.  

Astronomers, both professional and amateur, scientists from ecologists to geologists, dark-sky advocates, educators, writers, and other practitioners with expertise in the night sky are encouraged to apply. We prioritize local Indigenous storytellers who focus on the night sky, and other night sky practitioners from marginalized communities across the United States and beyond.

Selected astronomers live and work at the Grand Canyon South Rim in Arizona for up to six weeks in a private one-bedroom apartment above the historic Verkamp’s Visitor Center overlooking the Canyon. In addition to free live/workspace, a modest stipend is offered to offset the costs of travel, food, and supplies. Residents have first-hand access to the natural beauty of Grand Canyon National Park, park leadership, staff expertise, on-site resources, archives, and visitors from around the world.   

You can learn more about the program here. Applications are being accepted through July 31st for the 2024 program.

Volunteers Wanted to Help Classify Stars

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Gaia probe floating at a Lagrangian point beyond the Earth-Moon system, also called L2. (ESA/D. Ducros, 2013)

The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for amateur astronomers to assist with its review of data from its Gaia Mission. What is the Gaia Mission you ask? The ESA site explains this and much more:

The mission was launched in late 2013 and now lies some 1.5 million km from Earth. With its two powerful telescopes and three science instruments, Gaia is creating the largest and most precise 3D map of the Milky Way. It does so by determining the position of its target stars and registering how they change throughout time.

So far, Gaia has measured 1.8 billion stars with unprecedented precision, the richest star catalogue to date. Gaia’s third major data release, published in 2022, includes 10.5 million variable sources over the entire sky, identified using machine learning methods in a supervised classification scheme.

That’s a lot of data. ESA is now looking for assistance classifying the variable stars, which are the stars that change in brightness over time. This is being done under an ESA-funded citizen science project call the Gaia Vari.

As of today, the project already has over 520 volunteers. You can be one more.

Go here to learn more and be part of the fun.

Podcast: Assist UCLA with a SETI Project

Posted on by onespaceman2000

I found another episode from The Planetary Society’s podcast Planetary Radio that is worth checking out. In this episode, Are we Alone? The Search for Alien Technosignatures, Professor Jean-Luc Margot and doctoral student Megan Li discuss their project at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to identify signals from other civilizations in the galaxy and then extract information encoded in those extraterrestrial signals. This project, called UCLA SETI, was also the winner of a Planetary Society STEP Grant as well as a NASA grant to conduct this work.

As of last week, a volunteer site was set up to assist the UCLA SETI team with this project. Here is some key information from its website:

We host a citizen science collaboration on Zooniverse. Please consider partnering with us to identify the most interesting signals in our data. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed about our progress. Past issues of our newsletter are available.

Watch a two-minute video about the UCLA SETI course or a 30-minute talk about the search for life in the universe.

The video is actually a 55-minute talks, but the key section related to this project starts at the 23:38 minute mark where the downloaded data is discussed.

This is your chance to identify something that no one has every seen before. Put some of that time you might have spent watching The Ark toward something useful.