M. W. Castelaz,T. Barker, J. D. Cline, W. Bedell, L. OwenPisgah Astronomical Research Institute

Not-for-profit foundation

American Astronomical Society 213th MeetingSession 464.11 Education Public Outreach. Wednesday, January 7, 2009

www.pari.edu

The public is invited to participate in a

distributed computing online environment to classify the stars from objective prism plates.

The Michigan Objective Prism Blue Survey (e.g. Sowell et al. 2007, AJ, 134, 1089) plates located in the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute hold hundreds of thousands of stellar spectra, many of which have not been classified before. Plates are being scanned and stellar spectra made available for classification online.

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http://scope.pari.edu

The WebpagePre-processing

Three steps before making the spectra public:

1.Split a full plate scan into four panels

- Each panel is 1 MB to load online at a reasonable speed.

2. Pre-selected stars are made public by identifying and marking HD and BD stars for classification.

3. Activate the plate panels for online use.

The Objective Prism Plates

Use SCOPE in Astronomy Labs!

• Initially, all stars accessible to the public are HD or BD stars with published spectral types.

• Each classification of a star will be compared to the published value to build a histogram of differences.

• All classifications for a star will be averaged and standard deviation calculated.

• Comparisons to published values will form a baseline for future classifications of stars with unknown spectral type.

• The average will be used in the final classification of unknowns.

Currently in Beta-Mode: Testing the

Reliability of Spectral Classifications

Main SCOPE website with pages for the Science, How to Take Part in SCOPE, Classify Stars, FAQs, and Feedback.

Login and select a plate. Stars ready for classifying on the chosen plate are outlined in blue boxes.

Selected star is outlined by a yellow box and ported to a new screen for first level of classification by comparing to standard spectra.

After the first level of classification, a subclass can be chosen again by comparison to standard spectra. When done, the user is prompted to classify another star.

Standard spectral types are from the Library of Stellar Spectra by Jacoby, Hunter, and Christian (1984, ApJS, 56, 278). Their plots were re-formatted into images. A total of 119 spectral types are available and used.Plate CTIO-6099. Located at 12h 54m and -10O.

A 20 minute exposure taken March 8, 1970

Citizen Science Project