Citizen Sky

As part of the registration process, we asked new participants what they felt would be their biggest challenge in this project. The #1 answer, by far, has been time.  So we've put together a table of the amount of time needed for a sampling of roles in the project...Read more

It's December 8th evening, Julian Date (J.D.) 2,455,175 and we are only a few days from predicted time of Second Contact when total eclipse starts. The words "1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th contact" refer to moments when objects in eclipsing systems overlap partially and totally.  ...Consider a small circle crossing in front of a bigger circle: first, just the outsides touch (1st contact); then the small circle just gets fully inside the larger...

A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

The second issue of the Citizen Sky Newsletter has been released!  You can read the newsletter by following the link below or by visiting the Citizen Sky website and clicking on "Newsletter" under the "Communicate" menu tab.  Citizen Sky Newsletter #2 We hope that thi...s will be an easy way for you to stay in touch with whatʼs going on at CS.  Remember, you can manage your Newsletter subscription by visiting...

Algol, a.k.a. "The Demon Star" has some very well-timed eclipses for the month of December. It's a very bright naked-eye object and an entire eclipse can be seen in 4-5 hours. It's great training for epsilon Aurigae!Read more

Hello Citizen Skyers! It has been a while, so I thought I’d update everyone on a few components of the Citizen Sky Project... The eclipse is now well underway and Dr. Bob has been doing a great job keeping us updated on all of the "ins and outs" of the decline.  If you haven't already, read Dr....

We would like to invite those Citizen Sky participants who are relatively new to astronomy and/or the Citizen Sky project to an online "Beginners' Chat" to be held this Wednesday, November 18 at 8 pm Eastern (7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, 5 pm Pacific).  The goal of the ...chat is to answer questions about Citizen Sky, epsilon Aurigae, and/or astronomy in general....

Mid-November, ingress nominally 2/3 over, and the snows are arriving in the mountains.  We made one last attempt to reach Mt.Evans observatory on 14 Nov but huge drifts defeated the stout Unimog vehicles we used.  However, intrepid observers elsewhere are still getting ...peeks at the star, sometimes between clouds.  Some interesting trends are emerging since mid-October: the B filter photometry shows a decreased rate of decline, as does V filter (less...

Brian is leading a mini-campaign on zeta Aurigae. It is undergoing a short eclipse (compared to epsilon Aurigae) with a dip of only 0.1 mag sometime this month. Thus it will be quite a feat for even advanced observers. Up to the challenge?

There have been some interesting forum posts lately by a few CS participants. Here is a list of some of them you may want to check out:Read more

The first issue of the Citizen Sky Newsletter is attached to this e-mail in PDF format. We hope that this will be an easy way for you to stay in touch with whatʼs going on at CS.    We know that life can get hectic and you may find that from time to time you donʼt get to the CS site as often as youʼd like....

Greetings again from historic Mount Wilson Observatory, perched in the Angeles National Forest mountains, above Los Angeles.  As previously mentioned, we're here using the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) telescope array of 6 one-meter telescopes, op...erated by Georgia State University.  The light from 4 of these telescopes at a time can be merged in the Michigan IR Combiner, or MIRC.  Each pair of telescopes is capable of producing interference...

You can now view up to the minute data on the Citizen Sky Website for any of the 10 stars from the 10 Star Tutorial! You have the choice of plotting a light curve or displaying the individual data points in a list.  Our web developer Kate has added some neat extra featu...res like the ability to highlight your own observations and the ability to plot means on the light curve....

Join us tonight, October 25 at 7pm EDT (23UT) for an online chat with Brian Kloppenborg. Brian is Dr. Bob's graduate student at the University of Denver and a key advisor/scientist/everything-person for Citizen Sky. We'll talk about all aspects of CS so bring any questi...ons you have. Just visit this web page to join us. As always, the transcript will be posted online for those who cannot attend. Transcripts of other chats can be found here.

Observers are reporting visual magnitude approaching 3.4, which is half-way between the out of eclipse average, close to 3.0, and the anticipated magnitude during totality, 3.8.  Hopkins and Santangelo have begun to converge on JD 2,455,065 (+/- a few days) as the likel...y time of first contact (start of eclipse).  Today being JD 2,455,127 (23 Oct), that was 62 days ago.   At this rate, we'll bottom out in totality by JD 2,455,189 or slightly sooner - close to winter solstice.  Jeff Hopkins predicts 2,455,183 for visual, and earlier in photometrically bluer wavelengths.Read more

Join us Sunday, October 5 at 7pm EDT (23UT) for an online chat with Brian Kloppenborg. Brian is Dr. Bob's graduate student at the University of Denver and a key advisor/scientist/everything-person for Citizen Sky. We'll talk about all aspects of CS so bring any question...s you have. Just visit this web page to join us. As always, the transcript will be posted online for those who cannot attend. Transcripts of other chats can be found here.

In August 2009 Citizen Sky held a workshop in Chicago on epsilon Aurigae and observing.  Most of the talks during this workshop were videotaped.  The first set of videos are now online along with their corresponding presentation files.  If you missed the workshop or if ...you would like to revisit your favorite talk, check it out.  More videos are on the way, so stay tuned!

As noted by Jeff Hopkins in the Epsilon Aurigae Campaign newsletter and a recent Astronomer's Telegram, the eps Aur eclipse seems to have started later than was predicted by data from previous eclipses.  What could be the cause of such a change?  How could you confirm y...our theory?  The scientific process often begins with a thorough discussion of the problem and brainstorming solutions with colleagues.  In an effort to start such [...]