Project info
Team
Project Leaders
Elizabeth Warner
A Principal Faculty Specialist in the Department of Astronomy and the Observatory Director, Elizabeth spearheaded the LaunchUMD campaign to acquire the cameras. Her primary role in the project has been as a science advisor.
Dr. Peter Teuben
Dr. Peter Teuben is a Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Astronomy. Although his main interests are in galactic dynamics, hydrodynamics, and radio astronomy software, it was his interest in community software development that led him to join MASN in Summer 2015. He has been the Python coding advisor over the years training CPS-SDU students in using Python and GitHub. He also led an IAU/OAD sponsored project to take an All Sky Camera to Haiti and teach astronomy there.
College Park Scholars Participants
Spring 2015: Eric Lyness, Steve Ryan
For their SDU Capstone project, Steve and Eric were the content creators for the LaunchUMD campaign.
2015-2016: James Gaitan, Anna Kraft
As SDU students, Anna and James tried writing an improved camera control program as an alternative to the proprietary software.
2016-2017: Benji Cooper, Baram Sosis
Benji and his friend Baram started by continuing the work Anna and James had started, but after discovering AllSkEye, Benji alone worked on coding a better meteor detection algorithm.
2017-2018: Joe Cohen
Joe continued working on the meteor detection program that Benji started.
2018-2019: Zach Rabin, Dmitriy Yarunin
Zach and Dmitriy also worked on the meteor detection algorithms and started looking at how to present the results on a webpage.
2019-2020: Sam Wills
For his SDU Capstone, Sam designed and built the MASN website.
2020-2021: Michael Suehle
Michael focused on the detection algorithms as well as writing scripts for clearing out overexposed images.
2021-2022: Nick Riley
2021-2022: Aman Sheth
Other Contributors
Ashlee Wilkins
(Spring 2015) Ashlee served as content advisors during the LaunchUMD campaign and identified potential partner hosts for the cameras.
Shawn Foster
(Summer 2015) As a summer intern, Shawn assisted with the installation of MASN-1 at the UMD Observatory.
Dr. Geoff Ryan
Dr. Ryan handles the database.
Ramsey Karim
A grad student that is helping with the project.
Jonathan Lin
(Summer 2021) Jonathan implemented the image viewer and ROI tagger.
Jonathan's presentation A brief overview of the new features.
Israel Biniam
(Fall 2022) Israel manually reviewed false-positive detections.
Sponsors
LaunchUMD is the crowdfunding platform for the University of Maryland. In early 2015, Observatory staff with the support of the Astronomy department, GRAD-MAP, and CMNS successfully proposed a project to raise $5,000 to acquire 2 cameras (and their control computers). The campaign was a great success, raising $8,745 or 174% of the goal. In addition, by taking advantage of educational discounts and bulk purchasing, the team was able to purchase 5 cameras.
Updated: 26-Apr-2024