Planet Four Talk

A Brand New Zooniverse and a New Project - Introducting Planet Four: Terrains

  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator

    Hi,

    Today the Zooniverse launched their new platform that enables easy building of a suite of types of citizen science projects. This set opens up a whole new era of citizen science. You can learn more about this here. The Planet Four team is proud to be involved in this. We were selected as one of the first science teams to try out and test the project builder.

    So we're thrilled to announced today that along with the new Zooniverse system, we are launching a new project in the Planet Four family - Planet Four: Terrains.

    The South Pole of Mars is a strange and wonderful place. Many of its surface features are sculpted by the never-ending cycle of freezing and thawing of exposed carbon dioxide ice and subsurface water ice. This features includes 'spiders' (radially organized channels carved in the surface), pitted sheets of carbon dioxide ice nicknamed Swiss Cheese Terrain, and channel networks carved by carbon dioxide gas trapped below the thawing ice sheet and also by the freezing and thawing of water ice permafrost. With Planet Four: Terrains, we need your help to identify these different surfaces in images taken in orbit by the Context Camera (CTX). You can learn more in this introductory blog post by Michael.

    Also, as part of the new platform is a Zooniverse wide talk. So if you have thoughts about the wider Zooniverse or want to share how awesome you think Planet Four or Planet Four:Terrains is you can access Zooniverse Talk here.

    If you've got questions or concerns, feel free to post them here or on Planet Four: Terrains Talk.

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

    Posted