Tag Archives: sunspotter

Fun, News

Sunspotter Citizen Science Challenge Update: Zooniverse Volunteers Are Overachievers

1 Comment

An apology is owed to all Zooniverse volunteers; We incredibly underestimated the Zooniverse Community’s ability to mobilize for the Sunspotter Citizen Science Challenge. You blew our goal of 250,000 new classifications on Sunspotter in a week out of the water!  It took 16 hours to reach 250,000 classifications.  I’ll say that again, 16 hours!

By 20 hours you hit 350,000 classifications. That’s an 11,000% increase over the previous day. By the end of the weekend, the total count stood at over 640,000.

Let’s up the ante, shall we? Our new goal is a cool 1,000,000 classifications by Saturday September 5th.  That would increase the total number of classifications since Sunspotter launched in February 2014 by 50%!

Thank you all for contributing!

P.S. Check out the Basics of a Solar Flare Forecast on the Sunspotter blog from science team member Dr. Sophie Murray.

CitizenScience, Fun, News, Science

Sunspotter Citizen Science Challenge: 29th August – 6th September

1 Comment

Calling all Zooniverse volunteers!  As we transition from the dog days of summer to the pumpkin spice latte days of fall (well, in the Northern hemisphere at least) it’s time to mobilize and do science!

Sunspotter Citizen Science Challenge

Our Zooniverse community of over 1.3 million volunteers has the ability to focus efforts and get stuff done. Join us for the Sunspotter Citizen Science Challenge! From August 29th to September 5th, it’s a mad sprint to complete 250,000 classifications on Sunspotter.

Sunspotter needs your help so that we can better understand and predict how the Sun’s magnetic activity affects us on Earth. The Sunspotter science team has three primary goals:

  1. Hone a more accurate measure of sunspot group complexity
  2. Improve how well we are able to forecast solar activity
  3. Create a machine-learning algorithm based on your classifications to automate the ranking of sunspot group complexity
Classifying on Sunspotter
Classifying on Sunspotter

In order to achieve these goals, volunteers like you compare two sunspot group images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and choose the one you think is more complex.  Sunspotter is what we refer to as a “popcorn project”.  This means you can jump right in to the project and that each classification is quick, about 1-3 seconds.

Let’s all roll up our sleeves and advance our knowledge of heliophysics!

News, Science

Become a Sunspotter and play Solar ‘Hot-or-Not’

1 Comment

avatar_sunspotter

A few months ago we quietly placed a new project online. Called Sunspotter, it was essentially a game of hot-or-not for sunspot data – and since there were not many images available at the time, we thought it best to just let it be used by the people who noticed it, or who had tried it during the beta test. The results have since been validated, and the site works! In fact there are even preliminary results, which is all very exciting. Loads of new images have now been prepared, so today Sunspotter gets its proper debut. Try it at www.sunspotter.org.

On the site you are shown two images of sunspot groups and asked which is more complex. That might sound odd at first, but really it’s quite easy. The idea behind the science of Sunspotter is summed-up neatly on the Sunspotter blog:

I’m pretty sure you have an idea of which is the more complex: a graduate text on quantum mechanics, or an Italian cookbook? On the other hand, it would not be straight-forward for a computer to make that choice. The same is true with sunspot groups.

Or put another way: like many things in life, you’ll know complexity when you see it. Try it out now: it works on laptops, desktops, tablets and phones and you can keep up to date on Twitter, Facebook, G+, and the project’s own blog.

Screenshot 2014-06-13 19.39.24