Abstract:

GLORIA ("GLObal Robotic-telescopes Intelligent Array") is an innovative citizen-science project, which will give free and open access to a growing collection of robotic telescopes via a Web interface. The project (www.gloria-project.eu) has been funded for 3 years by the EU under the FP7 eInfrastructures programme and involves 14 institutions across 8 countries. During the lifetime of the project, at least 17 telescopes will be deployed for use by citizen scientists. There are four key elements to the GLORIA project from the users’ point of view:

• Free and open access to the telescopes of the network to make observations, based on users’ requests.
• A web interface and software that will allow anyone to add their own telescope to the network. The web access will be based on the `Ciclope Astro’ software, currently running on the world’s first free-access robotic telescope at Montegancedo Observatory outside Madrid. The web access will allow the user to directly control any of the telescopes remotely. This may be a particularly attractive option for teachers and schools.
• Citizen science experiments, to be coordinated by Zooniverse, using data from GLORIA telescopes, or from other astronomical archives.
• Live web broadcast of astronomical events and associated educational activities, including the Transit of Venus on June 5th-6th, 2012, the Aurora Borealis and upcoming solar and lunar eclipses, all with associated educational materials that primarily target high school students.

The challenge will be to involve people from around the world, to maximise their collective intelligence and to foster their participation in astronomy research and related educational activities, both in data analysis and actual observations.

Keywords:

Astronomy, robotic telescope, citizen science, virtual laboratory, live broadcast.