NZ Citizen Astronomers and Asteroid Occultations

Who doesn’t want to be able to contribute meaningfully to our understanding of the Cosmos? As part of the Unistellar/SETI network, that is exactly how several New Zealand-based citizen scientists spend their free time.

The Unistellar network has now spread to New Zealand, where citizen astronomers Michael Camilleri and Gareth Davies have rallied their community to capture these fleeting events. Join us as we talk to them about their experience observing asteroids 1407 Lindelof and 3803 Tuchkova, and how their observations advance professional science.

Since 2019, Unistellar has been building a network of citizen astronomers that use their smart telescopes, called eVscopes, to contribute to science from anywhere in the world. These citizen scientists often use their eVscopes to observe asteroid occultations, in which an asteroid briefly blocks the light from a faraway star. The data they gather is then sent to SETI Institute scientists, who analyze it to help determine the size and shape of the asteroid.  

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