Open this publication in new window or tab >>Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Computing Science.
Center for Basic Space Science, National Space Research and Development Agency, P.O. Box 2022, Enugu, Nsukka, Nigeria.
Sirius Astronomy Association, Sirius Astronomy Association, BP 18, Cité du 20 Aout, Constantine, Algeria.
Department of Physics, University of Constantine 1, LPMPS & CERIST, Constantine, Algeria.
Research Unit in Scientific Mediation, Science of Matter Division, CERIST, Constantine, Algeria.
Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, Stockholm, Sweden.
IES Tartessos, Barriada Hiconsa s/n, Sevilla, Camas, Spain.
Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Box 337, Uppsala, Sweden.
Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Box 337, Uppsala, Sweden.
Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Delaware, 217 Sharp Lab, DE, Newark, United States.
Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute, Atomic-Haatso Rd., Kwabenya, P.O. Box LG 80 233, Accra, Ghana; African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Ghana, Accra (AIMS Ghana), University of Ghana, Summerhill Estates Ltd., Rd., Santeo, Legon, P.O. Box LG 25, Accra, Ghana.
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Avda Vía Láctea s/n, Tenerife, La Laguna, Spain; Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, La Laguna, Spain.
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Avda Vía Láctea s/n, Tenerife, La Laguna, Spain; Gran Telescopio Canarias (GRANTECAN), Cuesta de San José s/n, La Palma, Breña Baja, Spain.
Space Laser Awareness, 3883 Petaluma Hill Rd, CA, Santa Rosa, United States.
Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Manora Peak, Nainital, India.
Independent Researcher, Uppsala, Sweden.
Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zürich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, Zürich, Switzerland.
Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Mol, Belgium.
Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Galileo Project Affiliate, PA, Laughlintown, United States.
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Avda Vía Láctea s/n, Tenerife, La Laguna, Spain; Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, La Laguna, Spain.
Meru Physics Department, University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 972-60200, Meru, Kenya.
Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80 Nandan Rd, Shanghai, China.
Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University, South Rd, Durham, United Kingdom.
Show others...
2022 (English)In: Universe, E-ISSN 2218-1997, Vol. 8, no 11, article id 561Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project investigates astronomical surveys spanning a time interval of 70 years, searching for unusual and exotic transients. We present herein the VASCO Citizen Science Project, which can identify unusual candidates driven by three different approaches: hypothesis, exploratory, and machine learning, which is particularly useful for SETI searches. To address the big data challenge, VASCO combines three methods: the Virtual Observatory, user-aided machine learning, and visual inspection through citizen science. Here we demonstrate the citizen science project and its improved candidate selection process, and we give a progress report. We also present the VASCO citizen science network led by amateur astronomy associations mainly located in Algeria, Cameroon, and Nigeria. At the moment of writing, the citizen science project has carefully examined 15,593 candidate image pairs in the data (ca. 10% of the candidates), and has so far identified 798 objects classified as "vanished". The most interesting candidates will be followed up with optical and infrared imaging, together with the observations by the most potent radio telescopes.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI, 2022
Keywords
citizen science, SETI, surveys, transients
National Category
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-201224 (URN)10.3390/universe8110561 (DOI)000881392200001 ()2-s2.0-85141787535 (Scopus ID)
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2017-06372NordForsk
2022-12-122022-12-122022-12-12Bibliographically approved