Welcome! This project recently migrated onto Zooniverse’s new architecture. For details, see here.
Tom Killestein is an astrophysicist at the University of Turku. His research work builds software, databases, and deep learning classification tools for finding interesting transients in data from GOTO, and gathering follow-up data to learn what we can about how the most massive stars end their lives.
Lisa Kelsey is an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include transient phenomena, such as supernovae and kilonovae, and their relationships with the galaxies that host them. She is excited to uncover particularly unusual or rare transients in GOTO.
Emily Wickens has just started a PhD at the University of Portsmouth. She will be working with GOTO and LIGO, and is looking forward to learning more about the mergers of dense objects, such as black holes and neutron stars.
Laura Nuttall is a gravitational-wave astrophysicist at the University of Portsmouth. Her research focusses on developing techniques to characterise and mitigate noise in the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. With GOTO, Laura is keen to see what optical counterparts we can find to any kind of gravitational waves that are detected.
Joe Lyman is an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick. He wrote the software to calibrate and analyse GOTO images, and wants to use GOTO to find kilonovae and other peculiar transients linked to the deaths of massive stars.
Coleman Krawczyk is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Portsmouth, and is an expert in the development and data analysis of Zooniverse citizen science projects.
GOTO is an international research team built through the collaboration of scientists from across the world. We are grateful for the support and enthusiasm of the wider GOTO collaboration for the Kilonova Seekers citizen science project, and for the help of GOTO researchers with the Talk forum and media releases.
To see the full GOTO team, please visit our collaboration website.
SAlexandrov: Svetoslav Alexandrov has a PhD degree in Plant Physiology and currently works in the Institute of Plant Physiology and Genetics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is also a space enthusiast, blogger and author of popular science articles. Svetoslav has participated in different citizen science projects since 2019 and they help him to expand his knowledge in areas outside his primary scientific interest.
Marcossilva: Cledison Marcos da Silva has a degree in Physics and Pedagogy, postgraduate degree in Teaching Astronomy and also in Natural Sciences. His studies are related to young and cataclysmic stars. He performs CCD photometry and visual observations for AAVSO and contributes to international research and campaigns related to these stars. He is also involved in other Zooniverse projects such as Disk Detective, Black Hole Hunters and Planet Hunters TESS, among others. He is a collaborator on the Hunting Outbursting Young Stars project that observes star formation regions with the aim of studying their members and possible members and also on NASA's Exoplanet Watch creating light curves of already known exoplanets, thus contributing to the study of the properties of these worlds outside of the Solar System.
GOTO
Felipe Jiménez-Ibarra, Rubina Kotak, Amit Kumar, Hanin Kuncarayakti, Danny Steeghs, Krzysztof Ulaczyk, Klaas Wiersema
Kilonova Seekers volunteers
Cledison Marcos da Silva
Barbalbero
Louis Verhaeghe
inosenpai
As an international research team, it is important to us to be able to provide this citizen science project in the various different languages that are spoken by our GOTO researchers, and reach as many people as possible. Our translators are working hard to translate all of the Kilonova Seekers pages, and our regular updates. We couldn’t do this without their hard work and dedication!
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) project acknowledges the support of the Monash-Warwick Alliance; University of Warwick; Monash University; University of Sheffield; University of Leicester; Armagh Observatory & Planetarium; the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT); Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC); University of Portsmouth; University of Turku, and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC, grant numbers ST/T007184/1, ST/T003103/1). TK gratefully acknowledges support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC, grant number ST/T506503/1). LK and LN thank the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for support through the grant MR/T01881X/1. JL acknowledges support from a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/T020784/1).
TK acknowledges support from the Turku University Foundation (Turun Yliopistosäätiö, grant no. 081810)
Background images (c) Krzysztof Ulaczyk.