Lum

Lum| Hey! What Are You Looking At?

Awards & Nominations

Lum has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Finalist

Hey! What Are You Looking At?

The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) archives space agencies' data from missions studying electromagnetic radiation from extremely energetic cosmic phenomena (e.g., gravitational wave detections, gamma ray bursts, and supernovae). The Canadian Astronomy Data Center (CADC) is another repository containing missions studying comets, asteroids, and exoplanets among other things. Your challenge is to create a visualization tool that can help people interested in these phenomena to access the data quickly and easily.

Summary

The purpose of Project Lum is to help amateur astronomers to access information about supernovas. Lum transforms users into scientists with simple data access through web infographic and interactive tools.

How We Addressed This Challenge

More than 10000 supernovas and remnants were found during recent decades. Simplifying access to this data will allow young amateur astronomers to get multiple knowledge about supernovas observation and in potential allows them to become new discoverers. For this reason, we developed a web portal where users can find the most popular supernovas with detailed information about them and use an interactive map with the multiple supernovae in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies.

How We Developed This Project

We were inspired by our youngest teammate which is only 8 years old. He makes his first steps in supernovas observation. Hope that Lum Project will help him and other young amateur astronomers to improve and increase their knowledge.

To create a web portal easily and quickly we use website builder Wix.com. To develop an interactive map we take the JS code from the Aladin Sky Atlas and supplemented it to study supernova. We used Chandra X-ray observatory and Open Supernova Catalog to take data and information about supernovas location and features.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We took data and information about supernovas from Chandra X-ray observatory. We also used visualization tools of the Chandra X-Ray Center to view supernovas in the X-Ray range. We were inspired by Chandra's multimedia and ware happy to use it in our project video.