Hunting Outbursting Young Stars (HOYS) Citizen Science Project
By Carys Herbert (University of Kent)
Thursday 29 June at 8:00 pm via Zoom
Bio: Carys Herbert is a final year PhD student at the University of Kent, studying star formation using citizen science data. She is a passionate science communicator, working to bring astronomy to young people and the general public.
In this talk, Carys will give an overview of the Hunting Outbursting Young Stars (HOYS) citizen science project and introduce the science results relating to the surface spots of young stars.
The HOYS project is a citizen science effort that collects data from amateur astronomers on star forming regions within our galaxy that are less than 10 million years old and located nearby, within 1 kpc. Since its launch in 2014, the project has collected over 80,000 images that allow us to monitor the brightness of young stars over long periods of time. The project was designed to search for rare Outbursting events, and in the process has created a unique database of long term multifilter observations.
These young stars have hot and cold spots on their surfaces that can tell us a lot about their magnetic fields, rotation, and the way they collect material from their surroundings. By analysing the brightness variations of these stars in different colours of light (V, R, and I-band data), we can determine the periods and peak-to-peak amplitudes of these brightness changes. We then use stellar models to identify the temperature and coverage of these spots, and we also account for other sources of variability.
Tickets: Just £3.00 from https://hoys.eventbrite.co.uk?aff=oddtdtcreator
Open to all. Everyone welcome
Michael Bryce
GoSpaceWatch