Last summer, Mr. Jones applied for an opportunity for his students to perform citizen science with a group of researchers. Students have been using telescope time with participating universities and learning about variable stars, how to create and read light curves, and how to stack images through various filters. They have submitted their data to researchers.
Students have created some cool images and have submitted them to Mr. Jones to enter in a photo contest the HOYS project is running.
HOYS – Hunting Outbursting Young Stars, is a citizen science project run by Dr Dirk Froebrich (University of Kent) and co-leads Dr Aleks Scholz (University of St Andrews) and Justyn Campbell-White (University of Dundee).
The project works with amateur astronomers to provide long term multi-filter optical photometric monitoring of young star clusters or star forming regions visible from the northern hemisphere. The data is used to study star formation and the formation of (terrestrial) planets in the disks surrounding young stars.
Above: Image Mr. Jones created of NGC2246 (Christmas Tree Nebula) following the process students are using.