CITIZEN SCIENCE: This week -- Can You See The Stars?

Scientists around the globe have numerous projects where they ask for help from ordinary folks. Here's a chance for all of you to get involved in an easy (but significant) way in measuring light pollution. If you've got kids, it's a great way to get them into doing real science, too.

Here's the space.com announcement:
www.space.com...

And here's the very easy instructions:
www.globe.gov...

So hop outside tonight or another night this week and help out with some science!

to myself this kinda thing is of interest,

but, even though i brought up the recent MacNaught comet
and the Moon being eclipsed....as being exciting events to witness,


everyone of the younger folk of the family were more interested
in the PlayStation/ or was it GameBoy/ or something....

see, there's a disconnect going on here ... ... from both sides !


[[but in the youths defense; the light pollution here has dramatically increased since the 'downtown'
was relocated 5 miles away from my residence,
and in attempting to capture the Disney-World theme...local merchants
do the 10PM fireworks every night for a mind numbing 15 minutes,
thereby making more distractions the 'norm' rather than the exception]]

Great idea Byrd...

I am going to try this tonight if it's clear enough.

back home in Colorado on some nights the air would be so clear that you would be able to see so many stars, it sometimes brought tears to my eyes.

Now living in Florida, peh, there is so much light polution that I can hardly see many stars at all.

Here in london you would be lucky to see 15 stars. Sometimes I can only see about 5. But there have been a couple of special night were I have seen a lot more.

I wish I knew about this last Saturday night. We had a star party at the local astronomy club. It is supposed to be cloudy the rest of the week, so maybe I can go from memory. From the magnitude chart I would say we were about at 5th magnitude. The Orion nebula was looking very nice.

Bumping (hopefully folks will get out and try this. It's been too rainy and cloudy here in Dallas to do it. Maybe tonight.)

I'll look tonight and do the survey. It has finally cleared after quite a few overcast days. I am in a dark area of texas.

EDIT: Submitted my observation, which was 5. I wish people were not so afraid of the dark!

[edit on 3/15/2007 by roadgravel]

At this moment it's between magnitude 2 and 3 at my house. Usually It's up to 4 or 5 though.

But I was right in front of the porch. When I'm walking outside at night I can see the orion nebula (very faint) below the Orion belt.

[edit on 15-3-2007 by TheBandit795]

Strange, but you can see most of the stars here in Hungary. That's why we're called unofficially as the Children of the Stars. I've read this few weeks ago in a science newspaper or where. The Hungarians are naturally connecting to the stars, looks up to the stars day by day, can't live without it. Strange, I know, but for example there is no night that I don't take a look at the stars at least once a day. After I've read the article, I've counted this. I looked up to the stars approximately 30-40 without any real reason. It was just natural. And other Hungarians are do the same. So maybe there is a connection between this and that fact, that you can observe most of the stars from Hungary, even under partly cloudy weather. But when the time is clear and you're in the nature, it's beautiful.

Originally posted by Byrd
So hop outside tonight ... and help out with some science!

Done and done.

Thanks for the Heads up, Byrd.

My 10 y.o., who is already able to pick out Orion, loved taking part.

And finding the Long. and Lat. tied in with the 4th grade studies, as well.

"Finally, some fun Homework, Daddy."

And a click away from Byrd's link, points to one of my favorite wallpapers.

Earth at Night

Jeez, it's definately a magnitude higher right now. All because I started to wear a different contact lens in my left eye yesterday.