Citizen Researcher: Firmamento Workshop

The Firmamento workshop invited local and international experts in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics to give engaging lectures and network with other research professionals and enthusiasts. It also aimed to highlight the developments made by the Firmamento project, through invigorating talks from collaborators and hands-on demonstrations.

Firmamento was a Citizen Researcher Project, developed by the Center of Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics, to aid in the discovery of blazars by providing access to a wide range of well-known and recently released multi-frequency open astronomical data. Public participants preliminarily validated data from a large number of astronomical catalogs and databases using the tools provided by Firmamento and the Open Universe initiative. Using machine learning techniques, NYUAD scientists verified the data provided by public participants to identify and characterize blazar candidates. This data was used towards the publication of a new blazar catalog, available as an interactive table, accessible from the Firmamento website.

The Firmamento workshop aimed to illustrate the developments made by the project and included invigorating talks from collaborators and experts to showcase a breadth of research topics in the field of astronomy. The workshop highlighted the following themes:

• Space and ground-based multi-messenger astronomy
• Blazars and active galactic nuclei
• Open data and modern online tools
• Citizen involvement in Science
• New analysis techniques