Star Date: M83 – Uncovering the ages of star clusters in the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
From the homepage:
Most of the billions of stars that reside in galaxies start their lives grouped together into clusters. In this activity, you will pair your discerning eye with Hubble’s detailed images to identify the ages of M83’s many star clusters. This info helps us learn how star clusters are born, evolve and eventually fall apart in spiral galaxies.
A great citizen scientist project for when it is too cold to go outside (even if CNN doesn’t make it headline news).
The success of citizen science at “recognition” tasks (what else would you call subject identification?) has me convinced the average person is fully capable of authoring a topic map.
They will not author a topic map the same way I would but that’s a relief. I don’t want more than one me around. 😉
Has anyone done a systematic study of the “citizen science” interfaces? What appears to work better or worse?
Thanks!