Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
Update (23 February, 2021): ALL workflows are now COMPLETE. Thank you for all your hard work over the last 15 months! Data collection for the Mapping Historic Skies Project is now COMPLETE thanks to you! https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/webster-institute/mapping-historic-skies/talk/2780/1865732?comment=3035194
Research
Mapping Historic Skies
This project is a collaboration between the Adler Planetarium's Collections department and the Adler-Zooniverse team.
The original idea for Mapping Historic Skies came out of an NEH-funded digitization project at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, IL. The Adler collections team digitized more than 4,000 historical constellation maps and depictions, covering a span of 600 years and featuring artistic representations of the sky from around the world. The team realized the potential of this collection for research in the history of astronomy, as well as art history. For example, what if a researcher could compare depictions of a single constellation across this timespan, and from all over the world?
The Zooniverse workflows break down the identification of constellations in the Adler’s historical star maps into simple tasks achievable by anyone--without requiring previous knowledge of astronomy. The end goal is to narrow down the large Adler dataset into images of single, identified constellations.
In time, the cropped, identified images will be added to the Adler's online collections database. This means that online volunteers as well as visitors to the exhibit who participate in Mapping Historic Skies are helping with real research, and are participating as co-creators toward a repository of public knowledge.
Chicago's Night Sky Exhibit
The data from this project will be partially collected through an interactive iPad app, installed in the Adler Planetarium's Chicago's Night Sky exhibit.
The intended audience for this interactive is visitors to the exhibit as well as online participants from all over the world, although these two groups of volunteers will participate in different tasks.
In the exhibit, visitors can use the iPad app to draw boxes around individual constellations (an image can contain as many as 6 constellations). Online volunteers will be able to look at the cropped images and help answer a series of questions to identify the constellation being depicted.