GOTO Kilonova Seekers Citizen Science Venture Launched – Astronotes

Common readers of those notes might have heard of the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) challenge which goals to detect the optical counterpart of Gravitational Wave occasions. These occasions are because of the collision of neutron stars, or a neutron star colliding with a black gap. The scientists concerned in GOTO, of which Armagh is a founding accomplice, monitor alerts from the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA detectors, which establish a area of the sky {that a} gravitational wave sign, which is indicative of such a collision, got here from. Our GOTO telescopes routinely set off inside 30 seconds of the alert to start looking this area of the sky to search out the optical counterpart of the gravitational wave sign. As soon as photographs are taken, they’re instantly processed and analysed by the workforce.

This simulation reveals two neutron stars colliding within the middle the place they throw out materials at almost the velocity of sunshine in jets of particle (pink). This fast-moving materials generates a burst of gamma rays. (NASA/GSFC/CI Lab)

Nevertheless, since there could be many hundreds of occasions, it would show a tough process to evaluation all occasions shortly. GOTO has due to this fact provide you with an thrilling new challenge Kilonova Seekers which asks volunteers to play “spot-the-difference” to search out kilonovae – the cosmic explosions of neutron stars and black holes colliding in distant galaxies. Utilizing information from the GOTO telescopes, this distinctive challenge allows you to assist us within the identification of those uncommon occasions, and different transient occasions reminiscent of supernovae, in close to real-time, updating with new information in a every day stream. With out the residents scientists, we might miss very important discoveries. We’re additionally significantly enthusiastic about photographs the place our preliminary machine studying (one type of synthetic intelligence) course of is unsure, as these usually tend to be one thing new!

Our telescopes survey the whole sky each evening (climate relying), so new photographs will likely be uploaded to the challenge every day for the residents to research – with most not but seen by human eyes. This represents a unbelievable means for the general public to be concerned with real-time, cutting-edge scientific analysis.

GOTO consists of two similar nodes: GOTO-North at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Canary Islands, and GOTO-South at Siding Spring Observatory, Australia. Every node hosts two mount programs every holding eight particular person telescopes, working collectively to cowl huge areas of sky shortly. As La Palma and Siding Spring are on reverse sides of the world this permits for fixed commentary, i.e. as one web site is closing for the day the opposite will take over. This permits the GOTO system to survey the whole sky each 2-3 days, taking much more information than could be analysed by GOTO scientists alone.

The 2 GOTO programs at Siding Spring, Australia (Krzysztof Ulaczyk/U Warwick). Two similar programs are working at La Palma within the Canaries.

Beneath we give some examples of spot-the-difference:

Your process is to inform us if they’re an actual astrophysical object, or a knowledge artefact – by enjoying ‘spot the distinction’ and on the lookout for the tell-tale indicators of a brand new supply within the ‘distinction picture’. Something that modifications in brightness could be detected with this technique.

The above occasion possibly a supernovae or exercise within the central black gap of the galaxy.

Though machine studying may also help us establish the obvious candidates, we’d like you to search out the hidden gems within the information stream – transients we might have in any other case missed or ignored.

This occasion might be instrumental or when the subtraction will not be actual.

Alongside the best way, we’ll discover supernovae, variable stars, energetic galaxies, and maybe issues we haven’t seen earlier than. That is an thrilling alternative to make direct and significant contributions to time-domain astronomy, and we hope you’ll be part of us.

This occasion might be a star which is `variable’, i.e. its brightness modifications over time.

To get entangled, please go to:

GOTO Site: 

Social Media Handles: @GOTOObservatory

The GOTO Kilonova Seekers challenge was developed by Tom Killestein (Warwick), Lisa Kelsey (Portsmouth), Laura Nuttall (Portsmouth), Joe Lyman (Warwick) and Coleman Krawczyk (Portsmouth).

Gavin Ramsay leads Armagh’s involvement with the GOTO challenge.