High-Level Project Summary
The Celestial Companion app assigns you your own star based on your birthday. The Soul Star changes its emotes based on whether the star became dimmer or brighter based on yesterday’s data. This is done to normalise that it's okay to feel different emotions, that we shouldn’t expect ourselves to be happy all the time.The app promotes practical learning, as users can venture out into the night sky and see the changes for themselves.In a post-covid world, where social development was inhibited, this tool bridges the gap to make the transfer from digital platforms to a physical meetup easier. It makes the data accessible to a variety of ages while disrupting societal stigmas on mental health.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Phase 1)
We would need to measure the variability of the stars constantly in order for this app to run or work all around the globe. Therefore at first, we would only want to implement it locally, we would work with data provided by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission. Create a widget that is compatible with iOS and Android.
Develop a system workaround for people whose birthday years do not have data. Example: older people where we have no information on how bright a Star was at that time period. Develop software that uses Artificial Intelligence that could help predict this.
Phase 2)
Once we gain access to more servers we can update the system parallelly to ensure that no data is lost and if one system fails, the whole app will not fail.
Phase 3)
Start to implement user suggestions, and start plans for the physical MeetUp spots. As time progresses we will be adding more emotes to make it more customisable and fun. Improve the accuracy of the data while working with NASA’s Bright Target Explorer (BRITE), The Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars (MOST) Space Telescope with the Canadian Space Agency. Rather than just working with the European Space Agency.
We would need Python, C++, Adobe Illustrator and access to servers that can handle a large amount of data and NASA’s open source data on Star’s Variability. For staff, we would need people who are good at graphical design to help create the emotes, IT staff to help maintain the servers, and experienced software developers that have worked with AI before to help develop a system to predict a star’s variability when the data or technology at that time wasn’t present, employ moderators to ensure all the chatrooms are a safe space and ethical hackers to make sure that all our data is safe.
The benefits of this app are that it promotes practical learning, as users can venture out into the night sky and see the changes for themselves. Additionally, in a post-covid world, where social development was inhibited, this tool bridges the gap to make the transfer from digital platforms to a physical meetup easier. It makes the data accessible to a variety of ages while disrupting societal stigmas on mental health.
We hope to achieve an impact that can be felt locally, globally and internationally. Where the community can start to heal as the newer generation can learn from past mistakes and employ a more positive outlook toward mental health and well-being.
There are 5 different major elements/features:
- Homepage
- Opportunity [Social]
- Look Up
- Time Travel
- Curiosity [Learning Portal]
The homepage consists of your Soul Star, a graph showing the variability in your star’s brightness over time, which corresponds to your Soul Star’s emotes.
Opportunity [Social] is the chatroom element which has three main sections: Astronomical Events, Local MeetUps Near You, and Mental Health Chatroom. It gives an opportunity to connect.
Astronomical events show you whether a supermoon, an eclipse, a meteor shower, etc. will occur within the next week.
Local MeetUps Near You is a chatroom to help connect people within your region to go stargazing, to view the upcoming Astronomical event, or to view your own Soul Star.
Mental Health Chatroom is a platform for support to help people realise that they are not alone. To normalise conversing about mental health.
All chatrooms will be moderated to ensure that no harmful or hate speech is vocalised.
Look Up makes use of built-in gyroscopes and GPS/Celluar WiFi which helps you to identify your Soul Star In the Night Sky.
Time Travel allows you to virtually travel back in time to see how the night sky appeared on your Birthday or another specific date in which the data can support (oldest data possible). This makes use of a dial to show a satisfying transition. It also displays the most notable differences in brightness of different stars compared to today. It also shows how much brighter/dimmer your Soul Star is compared with today’s data.
Curiosity [Learning Portal] supplies the user with information on Star Variability and asks a daily question, where you can earn points if you answer it accurately. Points will be displayed on the user’s profile, to add a gamification element. It incites curiosity to learn in the user.
Additionally, a widget will be made for both iOS and Android. A portal for Consumer Feedback will also be made available.
Space Agency Data
https://sci.esa.int/web/hubble/-/variable-stars-in-hubble-s-sky
The NASA and the European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope animation is what inspired us on creating the LOOK UP feature. The fact that you can visibly see how the stars became brighter or became dimmer as time passed, gave us enough evidence that we could detect the changes with our naked eye and therefore provide a feature that would encourage people to do this themselves.
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/cepheids.html
The visual on how Ceheids brightness changes over a period of time provided by NASA, was the basis for designing the graph on the Homepage on the User Interface to show your own Soul Star’s brightness. It also gave us evidence that we could quantify the brightness of the stars and how they changed based on past data. This addition can be seen on two elements/features on the app; located on the Homepage as well as the Look Up feature.
https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/brite/
Once the app has been released and no bugs seem to be present, we will start working with the Canadian Space Agency in coordination with their BRITE (BRIght Target Explorer) Constellation which is a fleet of five nanosatellites and Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars (MOST) to enlargen our database and make the information accurate. Since we are just developing the app right now, we do not have the full-scale resources to implement it right now if we tried, it would overwhelm the system and cause the whole app to falter. However, we can implement it parallelly, so there is minimum disruption to the system. This information inspired one of our future steps to take.
Hackathon Journey
Our Space App Experience allowed us to fully realise how much potential can be uncovered with open-source data. The fact that anyone can try to come up with a solution to a worldwide problem is inspiring and definitely something that we had in mind while attempting this challenge.
We were inspired by our own personal struggles, personally, I had a lot of trouble facing large changes in my life, especially in the past year, with the majority of the advice I was receiving being that I should be constantly happy. However, I now know that is almost impossible, we shouldn’t repress our own emotions or changes in our lives, to satisfy societal needs. We should process our emotions so that we can progress. Embrace change.
I wanted to convey my prolonged learning through this, as someone who loved stargazing to find peace in this chaotic world, combining these two worlds was a dream come true.
Our approach to this project was to do the best we can with the resources that were available to us. All of us are extremely new to coding and computer science in general, so, therefore, we did not know any programming languages. Considering that we felt that we were at a heavy disadvantage, we decided to make do with what we had. We poured all our effort into the brainstorming segment, and developing ideas for the user interface so that it was unique and felt fresh. We decided to use Prezi, for the paper-based interface we made during brainstorming so that it could provide a rough idea of how the app would work due to the fact that Prezi could link different slides together.
We would like to thank our school for informing us of this opportunity, everyone who thought us that change, variation and capriciousness are a part of life and that we should embrace it and finally to thank the people who initiated the Nasa space App Challenge, for it it wasn’t for you, we would have not reflected so much on the importance of variability.
References
Tags
#mentalhealth #variability #stars #App #change #localimpact