High-Level Project Summary
The application is made in order to inform people about stellar variability in a fun and interactive way. It changes your phone wallpaper automatically into an animated wallpaper that resembles the variability in the stars when you watch the introduction video about stars. For example, the first wallpaper is a star changing its brightness. You then answer 10 questions about stars based on 10 fact-cards to unlock the rest of the wallpaper styles.When you unlock all of them, you will be directed into a screen that will let you see stars in the space even closer using Google Earth features.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Challenge:
The challenge we chose is Twinkle twinkle little star, why?
This is because this challenge tackles a topic that is not well known to public, it is Stellar variability
People tend to see stars in the sky not knowing that these stars change their brightness by time , and we want them to know the science behind this change and make them observe it even closer .
Objectives:
The objectives behind this project is to inform people about stellar variability using an interactive and easy to use way that won't cause boredom and at the same time it will be exciting for those who are interested in astronomy and those who are not. In fact, the users will be encouraged to know about stellar variability without getting to do boring search.
The project:
Our project is a mobile application that changes the wallpaper of your smart phone automatically. There are 3 different styles of wallpapers. The first one will be a wallpaper with a star changing its brightness from blue to yellow to white throughout the day to resemble the change in color of the variable stars. The second wallpaper shows a star that revolves 360 degrees by the rate of 1 degree every 4 minutes. This wallpaper resembles the movement of stars. The third wallpaper is a scene of twinkling stars. In default, the user will have the first wallpaper unlocked and when he chooses it he will watch a 30 seconds video about stars, only then ,the wallpaper will be set on his phone. The second and third wallpapers will be locked. To unlock them, the user will have to answer 10 multiple choice questions about stars. A fact-card will be displayed on the screen with a piece of information from NASA resources about stellar variability. After that, the user will get a question about this piece of information. Each day, a new question will appear in the application and when a question is answered correctly, the user will get 10 points. When the user answers 10 questions and gets 100 points, the second wallpaper will be unlocked. Similarly, the second wallpaper will open after another 100 points and finally, the third wallpaper will open. Then, as a gift, a screen will open displaying a 3D view of Kennedy Space Center.
Project features:
The application will provide an interactive way to learn about stellar variability for those who are not interested in astronomy because the user will download the application mainly for the animated wallpapers that are present only in this application and at the same time he will watch a video and answer questions about stars to use these wallpapers so it will be a motivation for the user to learn more about astronomy
and it would be a chance to explore stellar variability as close as possible!
Data:
Data from NASA resources were used in three ways:
1- Determine the variables and their rate of changes in the stars in the wallpaper, which were variability in star's brightness and location.
2- Set the facts and questions in the fact-card to cover all the mentioned topics in the provided resources.
3- Pictures from NASA website were used to make the live wallpaper design and demonstrate stellar variability.
Implementation:
1-The UI of the app was designed using Canva.
2-The live wallpapers were designed by creating 50 frames from NASA star images while changing one variable in each set of images.
3- The application coding was done in Java language using Android studio.
4- The quizzes coding were done in html, CSS and JavaScript.
5- The code was reviewed to ensure that clean code was achieved.
Conclusion:
Out team, interstellar, are solving the chalenge: Twinkle, Twinkle little star with potential to encourage people to know about stars that they observe daily in the sky, without having to do poring search, so we made an application that brings the sky to their wallpaper, where they can observe it even closer. In the app, there are fact cards with questions about stellar variability from NASA resources, giving the chance for users to unlock new wallpapers and know more about stellar variability. Ensuring that they can learn about how stars change and change the way they look to sky
Space Agency Data
Data from NASA resources were used in three ways:
1- Determine the variables and their rate of changes in the stars in the wallpaper, which were variability in star's brightness and location.
2- Set the facts and questions in the fact-card to cover all the mentioned topics in the provided resources.
- https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/cepheids.html
- https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/cataclysmic_variables.html
- https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/cool_cataclysmic_fact2.html
- https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/timing1.html
- https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/kepler
- https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/tess
3- Pictures from NASA website were used to make the live wallpaper design and demonstrate stellar variability.
- https://sci.esa.int/web/hubble/-/variable-stars-in-hubble-s-sky
- https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/supernova/en/
- https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/kepler
- https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/tess
- https://sci.esa.int/web/hubble/-/variable-stars-in-hubble-s-sky
- https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/supernova/en/
Hackathon Journey
Stellar variability was a new topic to us and we got introduced to really interesting facts while reading about it. This gave us potential to provide this knowledge to people in a simpler way. Throughout the challenge, we decided to keep everything as simple as possible yet as enjoyable as possible , this is because we wanted people to learn everything in a simple way. During the construction of the application we have gone through many steps to insure that the application is easy to use and this made us read more about user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). Overall, it was a fruitful journey with lots of gained experience and used skills.
One of our team members said: "It was amazing I learn a lot from this challenge.
I learn to think out of the box also how to search about information I need.
We think that challenge a great way to show world how we live in a beautiful universe. our challenge shows how stars bright also how stars are great."
References
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/cepheids.html
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/cataclysmic_variables.html
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/cool_cataclysmic_fact2.html
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/timing1.html
https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/kepler
https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/tess
https://sci.esa.int/web/hubble/-/variable-stars-in-hubble-s-sky
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/supernova/en/
https://www.jotform.com/myforms/
https://www.renderforest.com/
https://clipchamp.com/en/
http://www.canva.com/
Tags
#stars #interstellar #application #wallpaper #android #java