Pune: PKC to launch One Million Galaxies to help citizens contribute to astronomy
At Pune Knowledge Cluster (PKC), the mission is to bring exciting science avenues to the doorstep of citizens and make the astronomy for all mission successful. Towards that goal, ‘One Million Galaxies’ — a citizen science astronomy programme, will be launched on the upcoming Science Day (February 28) with an aim to involve citizens to get over the difficulty of examining the vast amounts of data collected by astronomers.
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PKC’s principal investigator Prof Ajit Kembhavi told The Indian Express, “The programme enables interested people, who may not have any training in astronomy, to help find features in galaxies. All that they will need is access to a basic computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone and a reasonable internet connection, of the kind available through a cell phone data package. The required training will be provided through short training sessions over a video link. Trained persons can examine galaxies for features at their convenience from the comfort of their home and should be able to cover a hundred galaxies in a few hours which can be spread over a week or two.”
With committed participants, PKC hopes to produce an atlas of a million galaxies in some months. “This data will be made publicly available for use by astronomers and others all over the world and will be an important contribution by India, made possible by its citizens,” Dr Disha Sawant of PKC who manages the programme said.
PKC has been established by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. It aims to bring together academia, research and development institutions and the industry of Pune to address the challenging problems of the region through innovative means, using scientific knowledge.
PKC is committed to encourage and empower common citizens by inviting their participation in scientific programmes. It also enables citizens to participate directly in scientific programmes, helping to create data, for example, which will be used in professional scientific investigations.
The interactive online platform for citizen science astronomy projects, of which One Million Galaxies will be the first one, was launched after a pilot programme was developed and tested with the help of amateur astronomers, college students, homemakers, senior citizens and others.
Encouraged by the excellent results obtained, ‘One million Galaxies’ has been launched for any interested person located anywhere in India. It is expected that there will be participation from some other countries too. This programme has been inspired by similar programmes that are currently running on the web where citizens’ partnership plays a major role in scientific data analysis, like Zooniverse. This project is curated by Prof. Sudhanshu Barway from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.
Apart from Prof Kembhavi and Dr Sawant, Master students from IISER Atharva Bagul, Anish Deshpande and Nikita Balodhi are involved for data analysis and developing ML algorithms.
PKC’s Chief Operating Officer Dr Priya Nagaraj said this programme will be instrumental in making science done in laboratories more accessible to the larger community. “We have begun with astronomy but intend to implement this programme for several other types of scientific data going forward,” Dr Nagaraj said.
The team is also developing a programme of astronomy for the visually impaired which will use 3D models of astronomical objects and visual data converted to sounds (sonification) to make the wonders in sky accessible to those who cannot see them with their eyes. Such students too will be enabled to participate in citizen science astronomy programmes using sonification.
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Pune: PKC to launch One Million Galaxies to help citizens contribute to astronomy
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