Get Involved

ESA's Gaia mission has been collecting data on millions of space objects like stars and asteroids to build an extensive cosmic record. Now, to take it up a notch, it needs your eyes.

Gaia's data is already an invaluable resource for astronomers and scientists. The mission was launched in late 2013 and now lies some 1.5 million km from Earth. With its two powerful telescopes and three science instruments, Gaia is creating the largest and most precise 3D map of the Milky Way. It does so by determining the position of its target stars and registering how they change throughout time.

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Within Gaia Vari, an ESA-funded citizen science project, you can help classify Gaia's variable stars — stars that change in brightness over time. These observations are key to better understand these celestial bodies better.

As analysing individual sources is beyond the scope of the Gaia consortium, you, as a citizen scientist will look over images and graphs to classify stars' brightness changes, colours, and other variables over time. You may also identify incorrect classifications made by the automated algorithms. This will help scientists organise and categorise what we know of the millions of stars Gaia has observed, toward the next Gaia data release in 2025. You may actually discover the most interesting stars!

If the scientist in you wants to help, ESA has got you covered. From monitoring light pollution to classifying images of Mars, you can help us advance peaceful space exploration. We also hope that by opening up ESA data and tools to the public, we are improving the openness of our work, increasing citizen engagement in scientific research, and building stronger connections between science and society.

To participate in the Gaia Vari project, go to Zooniverse, a platform with projects where people power the research. There's no need for you to sign in or create an account. After entering the platform, you can learn how to look at the graphs and data and classify each variable.

"Gaia is deepening our understanding of the universe as we know it, and both professional and amateur astronomers have been amazed with the results analysed so far. Now we need help from the wider amateur astronomy community to better understand how stars change throughout the years", says Pedro García Lario, Community Support Scientist at Gaia Science Operations Centre.

Gaia Vari is a project funded by ESA, developed jointly by Sednai and Science Now.

If you are looking for a way to get involved in our association this could be a great way to do it. Get in touch by sending us an email to hello@cambridgeastronomicalassociation.com.