Transcript

INSTRUCTOR:

OK, so by this stage in the course, you've learned a lot about the night sky and developed plenty of new skills for yourself. So you've learned your way around the night sky. You've started to use software like Stellarium for planning your observing sessions. And you've taken your own images of celestial objects using COAST.

In the past week, you've learned about variable stars. And you're about to put that knowledge to scientific use by doing some more imaging with COAST. You’ll be doing this in the spirit of citizen science, in the sense that the scientific results that you’ll be producing from these different types of objects, the variable stars, will be put together with the results of others to produce the overall light curve. In this way, you'll be contributing to the body of scientific knowledge.

By now, you’re probably coming to the conclusion that scientific investigations can be challenging, but also incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. New technologies and new techniques are allowing us to probe ever deeper into the universe. The universe is vast. But as you develop your skills, you'll find that wherever you look, there’s always something amazing and interesting to investigate. And of course, there's always the exciting possibility of discovering something completely new and unexpected.