ANU invites citizen scientists to search for exploding stars

Supernovae are explosions as bright as 100 million billion billion billion lightning bolts, and so we can use them as markers to measure how the Universe is growing and what's causing its expansion to accelerate. ANU invites citizen scientists to join the University's search for exploding stars called supernovae, which help astronomers to measure the Universe. Professor Brian Cox will call on viewers of this week's ABC  Stargazing Live  broadcast to participate in the project led by ANU astronomers Dr Brad Tucker and Dr Anais Möller. Dr Tucker said scientists can measure the distance of a supernova from Earth by calculating how much the light from the exploding star fades. "Supernovae are explosions as bright as 100 million billion billion billion lightning bolts, and so we can use them as markers to measure how the Universe is growing and what's causing its expansion to accelerate," said Dr Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The ANU project will allow citizen scientists to use a web portal on Zooniverse.org to search through images taken by the 1.3-metre SkyMapper telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory. "People can help us find exploding stars by scanning the SkyMapper images online to look for differences and marking up those differences for the researchers to follow up," Dr Tucker said.