Citizen Science Update

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Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

Firstly,a big thanks to everyone who submitted their images a few weeks ago in support of Citizen Science.
It's time for an update.

If the attachment has worked, you'll see a pdf version of a slide deck that I produced from your images, although I have to apologise in advance to anyone who submitted images that are not included. The response was so overwhelming that I had many more images than I could accommodate in a presentation. I used what I could.

It was with pride that I presented our work to the solar physics group at the Mullard Space Science Labs based a few miles south of London. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/mssl/research/sol ... s-research

My talk lasted 45 minutes with 15 minutes of Q&A. The group of about 15 research staff were engaged and asked some great questions about our images and the tools and techniques used to create them. They were suitably impressed with the quality of the images and skills employed to make them. We discussed how we might collaborate.

In summary, there is a strong degree of interest in having our amateur images support scientific work, particularly in relation to the formation and evolution of solar flares and the dynamics of solar prominences, which are subjects of their research. The biggest challenge for us is where and how to store the images as they really need them to be stored in a searchable database, properly catalogued with all relevant 'metadata' attached, including, as a minimum, the date, time, location and equipment used. TIFF files are preferred. Animations are of particular interest as these illustrate the dynamics of such processes.

Our heavily modified images may look fantastic, but for scientific study the process of teasing out the very best image also corrupts the original (valuable) data. They would like to see the original raw image (after stacking should be okay) as well as the fully worked up image. Orientation is also important. Often as a matter of expediency we don't always align our images to the solar north/south, or flip them to correct for the effect of mirror diagonals and so on. It is preferred that all such corrections are made before archiving as this makes it easier to cross-correlate with other image sources. Calibrated original images are also preferred.

I think storing the database on Solar Chat might not be an option (because of cost reasons), so an alternative would be required. If anyone has any suggestions they would be more than welcome. Maybe an astronomy association could help? Thoughts?

Feel free to use the slide deck for any outreach talks you might want to give. In the meantime we should think about how we might move forward, making our solar images available to professional solar scientists around the world.

Thanks again.
PowerPoint Slides for Science Meeting 20190215.pdf
(9.25 MiB) Downloaded 132 times


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by marktownley »

Thanks for the update Stu, interested to see members ideas with this.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

Thanks, Mark.

Contrary to my comments above, it would be fantastic if we could somehow do this within the SolarChat forum site. A specific section for image archiving, maybe; just images (no comments) with the appropriate metadata, searchable by date, type of event, animation sequence etc.

As I mentioned, there would have to be a degree of rigour applied when taking the images, orienting them properly and calibrating the camera beforehand, but the great thing is that we can learn from each other how best to do these things; that’s at the core of SolarChat.

I see a great opportunity here for the forum as we begin our journey into solar cycle 25. I can imagine a beautiful record across the spectrum of growing activity through the entirety of the next cycle in superb detail from around the globe. All of this located in one searchable database, right here, with SolarChat being THE go to place for the best amateur solar images on the planet as cycle 25 unfolds.

I can’t wait to see again flares and CMEs, exploding filaments and proms. Let’s make our images count......pretty pictures, yes AND quality scientific data worthy of cutting edge scientific research. Move over, Parker......

This is a forum, so I throw it open for debate and comment.

Cheers

Stu.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Montana »

Absolutely fantastic work and dedication Stuart :hamster: sorry I haven't replied but had a very busy weekend. I remember a while back that the RAS had a grant for outreach which may cover this, I need to look that up when I get some time.

In the very beginning of Solarchat we tried many different methods of collecting photos on Solarchat, we had a separate section for adding images to for a specific day. However it didn't really work, everyone wanted to comment on the images (we can't help ourselves) and it ended up being a repetition of the main thread on Solarchat. We gave up on that, then decided to start a new topic for each day so everyone could add to that so there weren't multiple posts for each day. That didn't work as everyone wanted their own thread. So Solarchat wise, I don't think it would work. Also Stephen would not like to be spending lots of money on storage for the benefit of professionals.

I think the way to go forward is to get a grant, get a professional base to host a server and then have a submission area for individuals to fill out all the required details before submission.

Alexandra


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

Thanks Mark/Alexandra.
It’s interesting.....two comments yet 10 downloads.

Folks, if you have any thoughts on how we might proceed, then I’d be interested to hear your views.

Cheers.

Stu.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by marktownley »

Did Lucy have any ideas for an image repository?


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by MapleRidge »

Hi Stu...

Good to see the update, and the PDF looks great...shows the potential of what can all contribute. I was actually about to check on the session...wan't sure if you had presented yet or not.

Brian


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by rsfoto »

Hi,

Great presentation and even greater with an image of my Observatory :mrgreen: Thank You :bow

I am running a phpBB forum in Mexico and we can look at the images which have been posted daily. A friend made this and he goes through the whole forum and the images are always up to date and this did not require any additional space.

He programmed it in php as far as I know. I do not think he is an active member of this forum.

You can also jump directly to the message where the image was posted.

We can even search for the author who posted the images. OK, all images are presented but I guess this would not be a problem.

Look at the screenshot.

regards Rainer
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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Montana »

That looks good Rainer!

Alexandra


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

I appreciate everyone’s comments, thank you.

I’m just wondering if we’d lose something if not centred around SolarChat. Photos could be stored on Flickr, or Astrobin or whichever is your preferred Image hosting site, as we do now, so storage on Solarchat shouldn’t be an issue.

Ideally, we could have a separate section, specifically for images intended to be available to researchers. Listing in date order (20190227 for example) with a descriptor, Ha, AR12345, Flare, or whatever we can agree on, would make it easy to search. We’d just have to be disciplined enough not to comment.

Stephen R, any thoughts?

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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by MapleRidge »

Hi Stu and all...

in addition to the naming system to keep track of the contributions, would we divide the archive by filter type...Ha, CaK, WL, etc? It might save hunting if someone only wanted CaK images. This is only likely to work if images are stored in one 'central' archive site.

Brian


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

Hi Brian,

That might be possible, or maybe the advanced search feature could pull out the relevant images by filter type. So long as the search is confined to the archive section it should work, although we would need some guidelines around naming conventions in the 'subject' line to make it easier to find stuff. Keeping the archive clear of comments would also help limit false hits.

Stephen/Mark do you have the apatite to give it a go?

I can write some guidelines as a starter for 10 which we can knock around to achieve consensus.

Thoughts?

Stu.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by marktownley »

My only concern hosting here is image size, once an image gets above 3Mb it is painfully slow to load on SC. If we're saving 16 bit tiffs file size is going to be big. I just looked behind the scenes and we have over 18Gb of active attachments now. Have a look at the naming convention though.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by eroel »

Stu:
Looks great.
Thanks for sharing your meeting.
Best wishes,
Eric.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by p_zetner »

Hi Stu.

Terrific work and it looks like a great presentation. I think you did a great job of selling the capacity of our amateur community to produce research grade images worthy of the attention of professionals. I'm glad there was positive response on behalf of the UCL researchers.

The idea of an archival section connected with SolarChat seems to be the way to go but, unfortunately, I'm totally incapable of giving any advice on the practicalities of storage and easy retrieval. Rainer's format looks good and reminds me of the BASS2000 "Latest Observations" page which is largely dedicated to spectroheliograms from Meudon and Coimbra: http://bass2000.obspm.fr/home.php

Here's hoping we can make some progress with this. Like the amateur astro-spectroscopy community, I think a lot of us would be enthusiastic about making valuable contributions to ongoing research.

Cheers.
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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by pedro »

Nice presentation Stu

Maybe a FLICKR pro page will be the way to go. The only thing is that we no longer have 1Tb free


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

Many thanks for your thoughts everyone. I've been away on business, again, without the time to respond to this topic since last week.

Some thoughts:
Shipping off our images to some other site somewhere, I think, will diminish the value of what we've got here; effectively a global team of highly motivated solar enthusiasts with the equipment, skills and motivation to make really high-end 'world class' images, animations and time sequenced records of events on the Sun, in all practical wavelengths available to the amateur community (and in some cases beyond what is available with the various 'home brew' set-ups). Why let some other site get the benefit?

I'm confident that we can find a way. Flickr is probably not the final answer since the images are only available as JPEGs, even if uploaded as TIFFs. As an alternative, maybe we can share our best images on the 'Citizen Science' section (or whatever we wish to call it) as we do now, with an option for the solar researcher to email the person who made the image (via a PM, for example) and receive a TIFF version via private email. This way the high definition TIFF data will be stored on our individual computers, not on SolarChat, saving valuable memory on this site. It also gives the owner of the image control over who receives the image and establishes a link between producer and user of the data.

If we set up some rules/guidelines on the types of images to be archived, nomenclature for easy retrieval and establish a practical way of using this specific section, then it may be possible to have something of value to us and the professional solar research community. :)

Stu.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by rsfoto »

Hi,

I think if we implement in each image a series of data to fill out we could live with a solution I have presented.

The solution as in my Forum does not cost any additional space and the only thing which would needed to be done is the list of the mandatory data in the message in which the image was posted.

This list maybe could look like this.

Date: YYY-MM-DD
Wavelength: H-alpha or white light or Ca or CaK or whatever wavelength it was
Spot number : xxxxx ( if any )
etc.
Author: Real name and Solarchat alias ... ¿?
etc.

OK, I also think, that when we upload an image, we must stick to the exact nomenclature in order to make the search easier.

I spoke with my friend, he is a member of this forum, but not active, and he told me he would be willing to take a look at the data base and implement it if wished.

The only additional thing to program is the search function for the mandatory list. Here for example it should be mandatory to input at least 2 search fields and based on this a list with image is presented and then, well yes then, the interested person has to go through the images and choose one he wants to have

No Pain, No Gain ... We are no children who want the mush ready served ...

Just my 2 cents and IMHO

regards Rainer

PD Why not test it and see how it works ? If you want I can tell him to contact the person in charge of this forum so he can get access and look into the database and whatever he needs. He is no amateur programmer. He lives from working with databases ...


regards Rainer

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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by LauraMS »

Hello,

thanks for the report on the meeting with the professionals.This sounds like there is some general interest which is great!

Although it may sound a bit less enthusiastic I think that we should have a few things in mind:

* Amateurs, and most of us here at SC, are used to and interested in generating pretty pictures. Professionals usually want images with clearly defined image contrast. This was also mentioned in Stu's report. I.e. stacked images, no more postprocessing. We could overcome this by saving science AND pretty pictures. However, this increases memory demands.

* Professionals need well defined position information, as well as info on image orientation. Moreover, more details on instrument's and atmospheric conditions may be needed (seeing, structured reporting). All this can be done but is extra work - not too many may be interested in doing that with the required precision).

* hires data (i.e. with small field of view) will require even more efforts to gice clear position of the field on the solar disk

* given that there are already other amateur databases like ALPO solar archives, or the one in French language: do we want one more, or would it make some sense to put things together?

* given that professionals have quite a number of well-defined data available from satellites (e.g.helioviewer software), and also terrestrial imaging data from Kanzelhöhe, Hawaii,...: where can we really contribute with our data such that professionals can get data they cannot get from their professional networks. To me it appears this may be mainly in the field of flares and prominences with high-res (because professional scopes will not know where to look at, or they may have their fixed operation schedules with little flexibility). Here a worldwide network of high-res images I different spectral regions may make a lot of sense.

I hope this sounds not too negative or pessimistic but I think it is a good to at least discuss such things before actually implementing databases...

Best wishes
Laura


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by PDB »

Not pessimistic Laura, just realistic.
Clear defined targets would be preferable.

Paul


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Carbon60 »

Thanks for your feedback, Rainer, Laura & Paul. Excellent comments.

I share your scepticism, Laura, that this may take more effort that many may be interested in applying; no longer 'just pretty pictures', but for those that may be interested there should, perhaps, be a section for 'professional quality data'. I agree that we'd need guidelines and 'clearly defined targets' in a searchable database. Thanks for the offer in this regard, Rainer, though maybe first we should see what can be done with the standard 'advanced search function' already available to us. As you suggest, it will depend on how images are referenced as to how searchable they are. If your friend can advise here it would be helpful.

Laura, you are absolutely correct about the issues with large professional scopes. They have a schedule to follow which is dictated months in advance and so it is difficult to target spurious events in high res in real time, such as solar flares, or lift-off proms. We don't have such restrictions. This was brought up in the meeting I had at UCL and our advantage here was clearly acknowledged.

Most images will no doubt be as they are now. Most will remain in the main section of SolarChat and will remain superb image records of our daily Sun. However, if we as a group agree to set this separate section up then it will provide a route for pro-am collaboration for those 'special events' yet to appear in solar cycle 25 for those who wish to take the time and effort to contribute. I envisage this section being predominantly for flares and active proms in formats of interest to the professionals.

I'll get some further clarification from my contacts at UCL to define more precisely what type of data they (and other professionals) would value and how it should be presented, including a list of metadata that should be provided alongside.

BTW I've checked out the solar sections on some of the other (unnamed) sites containing amateur images and they mostly fall well short of the quality of work found on SolarChat. We really have something here.....

Others reading this, if you think I'm totally 'off base' with the 'vision' here, then please let me know.

Cheers

Stu.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by LauraMS »

Hello Stu,

having a 'ProAm' or 'Science Data' section in addition to what we have would probably be a good idea. There a discussion about standard protocols may also be well placed, maybe even a pro could take part in the discussion from time to time. As a result a guideline for science imaging for different wavelengths a objects, as well as a definition of science data post-processing should be defined.

Two more potential fields where our images could be the temporal evolution of sunspot details (over timescales of many hours to days), because even the biggest scopes don't have perfect seeing permanently (besides limited time allocation).

Another science potential may be imaging of white light flares, and the temporal evolution of pores. Given the rare occurrence, and/or unpredictable location on the sun, and lifetime (hours to a day or so in case of many pores) these are objects hard to image for the pros. A flexible and worldwide network of amateurs like SC will be of benefit here.

It will be interesting to hear what your pro contacts think. It would also be of interest if they have an idea on the minimal aperture our scopes should have (considering existing pro patrol telescopes like at Kanzelhöhe, i.e. 5 inch refractor type instruments).

Thans for organizing this exciting initiative for our community Stu!

Best, Laura


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by Valery »

LauraMS wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:15 pm

Another science potential may be imaging of white light flares, and the temporal evolution of pores. Given the rare occurrence, and/or unpredictable location on the sun, and lifetime (hours to a day or so in case of many pores) these are objects hard to image for the pros. A flexible and worldwide network of amateurs like SC will be of benefit here.

It will be interesting to hear what your pro contacts think. It would also be of interest if they have an idea on the minimal aperture our scopes should have (considering existing pro patrol telescopes like at Kanzelhöhe, i.e. 5 inch refractor type instruments).
I don't think that a 5" instrument can really help in studying of pores evolution from appearing to disappering. Resolving power of a telescope should be several times better than typical pore size. I believe 11" aperture is a minimal telescope size for studying of pores.

See the image. This image was taken with 11" SCT at 393nm. At F/40 and with IMX174 chip.


Valery
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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by solarchat »

Im not sure how I feel about this. We have the space available for hi res images, but not videos.
I agree with Mark’s concerns but if you guys think it's valuable then we could certainly give it a go.
Stu, would you be willing to moderate the topic and make sure it all works properly? I can give you moderator access to this topic alone so you wouldn’t have to worry about bringing down the while forum…:)
I am currently paying a small fortune monthly to have this much space and speed so we might as well use it for something that might be productive. I do have some doubts that anyone would actually access these images but I’m happy to try it.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by solarchat »

Valery wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 8:47 pm
LauraMS wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:15 pm

Another science potential may be imaging of white light flares, and the temporal evolution of pores. Given the rare occurrence, and/or unpredictable location on the sun, and lifetime (hours to a day or so in case of many pores) these are objects hard to image for the pros. A flexible and worldwide network of amateurs like SC will be of benefit here.

It will be interesting to hear what your pro contacts think. It would also be of interest if they have an idea on the minimal aperture our scopes should have (considering existing pro patrol telescopes like at Kanzelhöhe, i.e. 5 inch refractor type instruments).
I don't think that a 5" instrument can really help in studying of pores evolution from appearing to disappering. Resolving power of a telescope should be several times better than typical pore size. I believe 11" aperture is a minimal telescope size for studying of pores.

See the image. This image was taken with 11" SCT at 393nm. At F/40 and with IMX174 chip.


Valery
That is a frikin fantastic image, Valery!


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by solarchat »

rsfoto wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:48 pm Hi,

I think if we implement in each image a series of data to fill out we could live with a solution I have presented.

The solution as in my Forum does not cost any additional space and the only thing which would needed to be done is the list of the mandatory data in the message in which the image was posted.

This list maybe could look like this.

Date: YYY-MM-DD
Wavelength: H-alpha or white light or Ca or CaK or whatever wavelength it was
Spot number : xxxxx ( if any )
etc.
Author: Real name and Solarchat alias ... ¿?
etc.

OK, I also think, that when we upload an image, we must stick to the exact nomenclature in order to make the search easier.

I spoke with my friend, he is a member of this forum, but not active, and he told me he would be willing to take a look at the data base and implement it if wished.

The only additional thing to program is the search function for the mandatory list. Here for example it should be mandatory to input at least 2 search fields and based on this a list with image is presented and then, well yes then, the interested person has to go through the images and choose one he wants to have

No Pain, No Gain ... We are no children who want the mush ready served ...

Just my 2 cents and IMHO

regards Rainer

PD Why not test it and see how it works ? If you want I can tell him to contact the person in charge of this forum so he can get access and look into the database and whatever he needs. He is no amateur programmer. He lives from working with databases ...
I appreciate the concern but absolutely nobody will be roving around our database except me and the paid consultant. :)
The vulnerabilities and fragility of this software is such that one extra space or special character could irretrievably destroy it. It is a constant and tedious battle to keep this thing running as the largest private astronomy database on the Internet. I would not be comfortable with anyone else accessing it.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by rsfoto »

HI Stephen,

My post you quoted is already 4 years and 10 days old

:lol:


regards Rainer

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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by solarchat »

hmm. oh well. better late than never.


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Re: Citizen Science Update

Post by solarchat »

sorry everyone. I didnt notice the date on these posts. Something about Fridays messing about sent these to me as new…lol


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