High-Level Project Summary
We developed this project so our users can test their knowledge on the JW telescope. Our project is an interactive game where users can move through a plethora of questions, each having images taken by different telescopes. The user’s goal is to correctly identify the photograph the James Webb telescope has taken without selecting the images taken by the Chandra, Hubble, Juno, Spitzer, and Voyager telescopes. This game allows the user to learn about the capabilities of NASA’s James Webb telescope because we provide descriptions of all telescopes at the beginning of the game. We have a point system to allow competition between users.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
To be specific, our project is an interactive game that allows the user to learn more about the capabilities of the James Webb telescope. The user starts on the welcome page, afterwards, they are presented with a series of questions where they have to correctly identify the James Webb Telescope from a variety of 4 telescope images. It allows the user to precisely identify the James Webb Telescope's capabilities from the others shown. In order to develop this project, we used JavaScript, PHP, CSS, and HTML. Additionally, we used GitHub and vs code as tools for our project. Overall, this project is important because we have designed it in such a way that it allows the user to fully learn about the James Webb Telescope's amazing capabilities.
Space Agency Data
In our project, we primarily used data from the NASA website, however, we also used open data from the Canadian Space Agency (our references are linked in the “references” section of the project submission). We used this data to inform our user of the differences between various telescopes. We utilized this information so we could provide our users with information about each telescope. In particular, we used this data to explain how the James Webb telescope differs from all other telescopes we mentioned in our interactive game. This allows our users to specifically understand the amazing capabilities of the James Webb telescope.
Hackathon Journey
We have had an amazing journey with the NASA Space Apps Challenge. As it was our first time doing this challenge, we were unsure of the project challenge we wanted to do. After the initial setback, we eventually selected the “Learning Through the Looking Glass” project and once we did this, we were able to quickly jump into the project. With multiple video calls during the weekend and constant text updates, we rapidly sped through the project. We started planning out the details for our game, then developing a sketch of our vision. Afterwards, we started the foundations for our project including uploading our images to GitHub and gathering our facts for various telescopes. We went on to start piecing together various parts of the project and programming some of the game itself. During this process, one of the setbacks we faced was having everyone online at the same time. Due to various commitments, we resorted to texting rather than video call. However, members would respond hours later because of these commitments. So, if we were to participate in this event again, we would definitely improve our communication methods with one another.
References
Tools:
Websites for JWST Facts:
- https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/virtual-webb-space-telescope-launch-packet
- https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/assets/documents/WebbFactSheet.pdf
- https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/
- https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/facts.html
- https://webb.nasa.gov/content/features/keyFactsInternational/postcards/postcard_english.jpg
Websites for Chandra Facts:
- https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/astronomy/index.html
- https://chandra.harvard.edu/graphics/press/fact4-print.pdf
- https://chandra.harvard.edu/graphics/press/fact7-print.pdf
Website for Hubble Facts:
Image Credits:
- https://esahubble.org/images/archive/category/jwst/
- https://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/big_picture.html
- https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/spitzer/gallery/top-images/
- https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/gallery
- https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages
- https://www.rocketstem.org/2015/04/23/the-top-100-images-of-the-universe-captured-by-the-hubble-space-telescope/
- https://www.engadget.com/james-webb-telescope-captures-tarantula-nebula-101518582.html
Tags
#JamesWebb, #telescope