Commandline writes, “Dr. Pamela Gay is the principal investigator on a fantastic citizen science
project, Cosmoquest, that sadly has been a casualty of reduced funding for
NASA and for space science generally.”
The project is one of the most
successful of its kind, with a dedicated community of enthusiasts now
producing results comparable to the best professionals in the field. Rather
than accept that state of affairs, she has extended the highly interactive
and participatory nature of her project to the challenge of funding the
work.She and her cohort have just finished hour 24 of a 36 hour hangout-a-thon,
trying to raise $36,000 to help keep CosmoQuest going. They are just past
the halfway point to their funding goal. They only have a third of their
time remaining though. People can not only help out financially, they have
a set of goals for the participatory part of the project, milestones for
new citizen scientists to help them reach.
The 2015 Hangoutathon and Global Star Party