HR: 08:45h
AN: ED11D-04 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Starry Nights: The Great World Wide Star Count
AU: * Ward, D L
EM: dward@ucar.edu
AF: UCAR Education and Outreach, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Meymaris, K
EM: kirstenm@ucar.edu
AF: UCAR Education and Outreach, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Russell, R
EM: rrussell@ucar.edu
AF: UCAR Education and Outreach, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Gallagher, S
EM: sgallagh@ucar.edu
AF: UCAR Education and Outreach, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AB: Increased and robust understanding of our environment requires learning opportunities that take place outside of the conventional K-12 classroom and beyond the confines of the school day. There has been an increase in extracurricular activities that bring students into the "real world", sometimes spanning past the regular school year, and often times including other family and/or community members. Citizen science or public engagement activities are becoming available across many disciplines and are attracting the attention of people of all ages. The Great World Wide Star Count is an international citizen science event encouraging everyone to go outside, look skywards after dark, count the stars they see in certain constellations, and report what they see online. This inaugural Windows After Dark event is designed to raise awareness about light pollution and the night sky as well as promote learning in astronomy. The activities of Star Count benefit from the current excitement in citizen science, with 15 nights of observing in October. Utilizing the international networking capabilities of Windows to the Universe, Star Count is able to engage people around the world. Data collection and online reporting is designed to be simple and user-friendly for citizen- scientists of all ages. The collected data is available online in a variety of formats for use by students, teachers and scientists worldwide to assess how the quality of the night sky varies around the world. This session will share our results and demonstrate how students and scientists worldwide can explore and analyze the results of this exciting campaign. We will discuss how the project team planned and executed the project in such a way that non-astronomers were able to make valid and useful contributions. We will also discuss lessons learned and best practices based on this inaugural campaign.
DE: 0815 Informal education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting