sun@home

From our friends at RadioKosmos, who provide a partial Spanish translation of Are We Alone?:

PROGRAMA DE OBSERVADORES SOLARES VIRTUALES, PROSOL
OBSERVATORIO "CARL SAGAN"

In the XVII anniversary of the Astronomy Area and in behalf of the International Heliophysical Year, we launched the scientific-educative Virtual Program of Solar Observers, PROSOL in Spanish.

Now, a year later, we launch the same program for English speaking people with the name sun@home.

Since the beginning of the "Carl Sagan" Solar Observatory project, we envisioned it to permit the participation of anybody in our continuous program to record and monitor the solar activity.

This program is possible thanks to the images from our H-Alpha and Calcium telescopes that are on real time webcast through @stro tv Observation webpage. At moment, this is the only Worldwide solar observatory with this system. "Anybody can see what we are observing".

So, in this program we welcome the participation of students, teachers, amateur astronomers, and anybody interested in learn and participate in solar observation with this facility.

The dynamics to participate is to register as a candidate to virtual observer telling us the days and times you may observe with our system. This preliminary phase will be to give you a general preparation in solar Astronomy and to test your discipline in observation. This phase will take approximately 4-6 months where the candidates will receive on a daily-basis our Space Weather Report with the balance of solar activity.

If you are selected as a virtual observer, then you will pass to the First Observation Phase, FOP. In this phase you should recognize solar characteristics and phenomena through our telescopes and you will be officially a virtual observer of the "Carl Sagan" Solar Observatory with all the credits by the participation.

In the Second Observation Phase, SOP you will receive a manual where we explain how you could capture images and videos from our signal, and the information to learn the way to process and analyzed them. This is a phase when the virtual observer is very active and will send us a formal observation report.

In the third Observation Phase, TOP is designed for those people that are interested in participated directly in some of the research programs we have in solar physics.

There are several observational programs for public participation, but anyone focused in solar observation where you can learn and have a very active participation.

sun@home webpages with detailed information: http://cosmos.astro.uson.mx/INFORMATICA/observacion/sun@home.htm

sun@home e-mail: prosol@cosmos.astro.uson.mx

Real time webcast of solar observation from Solar Observatory "Carl Sagan": http://cosmos.astro.uson.mx/webtv/index.htm

sun@home in Spanish at http://cosmos.astro.uson.mx/observa/prosol.htm