by RJN » Thu May 06, 2010 3:45 pm
Sometimes, an amateur image posted to APOD may be unusual enough to advance science. In some of these cases, the APODees who ponder that APOD or the Asteriskians who participate in the discussion of that APOD may be particularly well situated to create a scientific paper that is more in the mainstream method of advancing science then just commenting on the Asterisk.
I believe that a case like this has come up recently with the APOD on the fogbow and/or glory: APOD (here:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100504.html) and Asterisk discussion (here:
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19273). First off, I have seen no image like it, not on APOD, Wikipedia, or Les Cowley's site. The image seems to have numerous supernumeraries for a fogbow, more than I have yet seen. At the least, the image is useful as a demonstration of a well known phenomena. At the best, the supernumeraries stretch existing physical models to explain them, possibly better illuminating these physical models.
Since this is not my subspecialty, I may be wrong (again) here, but sometimes my strange brand of optimism is rewarded. Let's assume this APOD can anchor a paper, how might it be best to proceed? At this point I will say that almost anyone with an interest in science can help in some way, no matter their age or formal education.
The first step would be to do a literature search to see if this APOD really pictures something scientifically useful. This search should be of the formal published literature in rainbows, fogbows, and glories. If it is found that the picture is uninteresting scientifically, then the project should stop. If not, relevant papers should be recorded and used in the new paper's introduction, at the least.
The next step might be to download Les Cowley's scientific program on atmospheric optics named IRIS found here:
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/iris.htm. This is freely available here but seems to require a linux or unix based operating system to run. One might run Cowley's program repeatedly trying to duplicate the APOD fogbow pattern as best as possible. This may mean creating a distribution of droplet sizes (hopefully just a program option) that best matches the APOD. I might guess that these cloud drops are large and relatively uniformly sized, but the program will know better. Scientific conclusions would be drawn here.
At this point a paper might be hashed out. Everyone involved in creating the image, the research, the code, and the paper should be considered for the author list. An abstract is written summarizing the image and results. An introductory section is written summarizing past work in the field and listing what steps were taken in this research effort. The next section might discuss the physics of fogbows and glories (some physics expertise is needed for this section) and what types of images might help advance present knowledge. The next section might display and discuss the APOD image, with attribution, and discuss how this image might be important for better physical understanding of fogbows and glories. The next section might report the results of Cowley's computer code and what was learned from it, discussing what the image really shows and what the likely particle distribution in the cloud was. The next section might speculate on what future images be sought that might shed even more light on how fogbows and/or glories are formed. The last section summarizes the results. References are then given.
Now this is an ambitious effort and may never be done for this or any APOD image. Conversely, some group or groups may decide to just go off and do this themselves, with or without knowing about this Post. That would be OK. Still, this case brought to my mind again the possibility that Citizen Science can start right here with APOD, with APOD images possibly being used to formally advance scientific knowledge.
- RJN
Sometimes, an amateur image posted to APOD may be unusual enough to advance science. In some of these cases, the APODees who ponder that APOD or the Asteriskians who participate in the discussion of that APOD may be particularly well situated to create a scientific paper that is more in the mainstream method of advancing science then just commenting on the Asterisk.
I believe that a case like this has come up recently with the APOD on the fogbow and/or glory: APOD (here: [url]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100504.html[/url]) and Asterisk discussion (here: [url]http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19273[/url]). First off, I have seen no image like it, not on APOD, Wikipedia, or Les Cowley's site. The image seems to have numerous supernumeraries for a fogbow, more than I have yet seen. At the least, the image is useful as a demonstration of a well known phenomena. At the best, the supernumeraries stretch existing physical models to explain them, possibly better illuminating these physical models.
Since this is not my subspecialty, I may be wrong (again) here, but sometimes my strange brand of optimism is rewarded. Let's assume this APOD can anchor a paper, how might it be best to proceed? At this point I will say that almost anyone with an interest in science can help in some way, no matter their age or formal education.
The first step would be to do a literature search to see if this APOD really pictures something scientifically useful. This search should be of the formal published literature in rainbows, fogbows, and glories. If it is found that the picture is uninteresting scientifically, then the project should stop. If not, relevant papers should be recorded and used in the new paper's introduction, at the least.
The next step might be to download Les Cowley's scientific program on atmospheric optics named IRIS found here: [url]http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/iris.htm[/url]. This is freely available here but seems to require a linux or unix based operating system to run. One might run Cowley's program repeatedly trying to duplicate the APOD fogbow pattern as best as possible. This may mean creating a distribution of droplet sizes (hopefully just a program option) that best matches the APOD. I might guess that these cloud drops are large and relatively uniformly sized, but the program will know better. Scientific conclusions would be drawn here.
At this point a paper might be hashed out. Everyone involved in creating the image, the research, the code, and the paper should be considered for the author list. An abstract is written summarizing the image and results. An introductory section is written summarizing past work in the field and listing what steps were taken in this research effort. The next section might discuss the physics of fogbows and glories (some physics expertise is needed for this section) and what types of images might help advance present knowledge. The next section might display and discuss the APOD image, with attribution, and discuss how this image might be important for better physical understanding of fogbows and glories. The next section might report the results of Cowley's computer code and what was learned from it, discussing what the image really shows and what the likely particle distribution in the cloud was. The next section might speculate on what future images be sought that might shed even more light on how fogbows and/or glories are formed. The last section summarizes the results. References are then given.
Now this is an ambitious effort and may never be done for this or any APOD image. Conversely, some group or groups may decide to just go off and do this themselves, with or without knowing about this Post. That would be OK. Still, this case brought to my mind again the possibility that Citizen Science can start right here with APOD, with APOD images possibly being used to formally advance scientific knowledge.
- RJN