As I was finishing my doctoral research related to Mars, I started to get interested in and work with lunar data. I was recruited to work on the Moon Zoo and then MoonMappers citizen science projects as science lead, and I have also been pursuing some of my own work.
Please note that you can contact me for any of the papers if you do not have access to them.
Research: Lunar Chronology | Variability Amongst Crater Analysts and Volunteers | CosmoQuest's Moon Mappers | Lunar Crater Database
Lunar Chronology
2012-2014
This is one of my first solo investigations, the idea coming around July 2012 at NASA's lunar science forum. Over the subsequent several weeks, I created 60 meter per pixel mosaics of the Apollo and Luna landing sites for which there are sample returns and then identified craters, ultimately putting them into the context of radiometric-dated samples.
This is a highly important concept -- craters are the only way we have of estimating the ages of surfaces other than Earth's in the solar system, and all of those ages that we give are tied back to the Moon and the Apollo and Luna sample return sites. The previous chronology papers that did this work have been cited hundreds of times, and yet my results are different, in light of the latest lunar images.
Papers:
Robbins, S.J. (2014) New Crater Calibrations for the Lunar Crater-Age Chronology. Earth & Planetary Science Letters, 403, p. 188-198. doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2014.06.038.
Abstracts:
Robbins, S.J. (2015) The Lunar Crater Chronology: History, Current Knowledge, and Holes
. LPSC 46, #1619. Click for Poster as JPG or PDF
This was re-submitted to a Crater Workshop that was held in May 2015.Robbins, S.J. (2013) Revised Lunar Cratering Chronology for Planetary Geological Histories
Robbins, S.J. (2012) The Cratering Chronology of the Inner Solar System
Variability Amongst Professional and Volunteer Crater Analysts
2013-2014, on-and-off thereafter
Many think that crater identification is simple: Draw a circle, get a result, publish, you're done.
It's not that simple. But, the variability has not been studied and published for over 40 years, and no work has ever been done to compare how experts do in their "natural environment" and compared that with minimally trained volunteers. Hence, this study. It took over a year to get completed as it wound its way through peer-review, but in March 2014, it was finally published.
Now, more work can be done: We can look at how automated codes find craters in these regions we studied, continue to add experts to the rosters and do follow-up work, look more into the psychology of identifying craters and how that affects things, and so on. If you're interested in getting involved in any follow-up work, please let me know!
Papers:
Robbins, S.J., et al. (2014) The Variability of Crater Identification Among Expert and Community Crater Analysts. Icarus 234, 109-131. doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2014.02.022.
Abstracts:
Robbins, S.J. et al. (2014) The Variability of Crater Identification Among Expert and Community Crater Analysts
This was re-submitted to a Crater Workshop that was held in May 2015.Robbins, S.J. et al. (2013) The Variability of Crater Identification Among Expert and Community Crater Analysts
Robbins, S.J. et al. (2013) The Variability of Crater Identification Among Expert Crater Analysts. Lunar Science Forum, 5, #135.
Movies Explaining Results (first is for general audiences, second is for professional):
CosmoQuest's MoonMappers
2011-present
Pamela Gay - Project PI || Irene Antonenko - Science co-Lead
CosmoQuest is a broadly designed portal for astronomy outreach, education, and research, and it was selected as an official NASA education institute in 2015. It was launched in beta on January 9, 2012, and officially on March 19, 2012. It is in partnership with many people but spearheaded by Pamela Gay (SIUE), Frasier Cain (Universe Today), and Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy). Within CosmoQuest is a section for citizen science -based research. That's where I come in.
I was tapped by Pamela to be the Science co-Lead of Moon Mappers, a section of the site that presents volunteers with small regions of the moon and asks them to identify features. At launch, we are focusing on craters, which is my expertise. My co-Lead, Irene Antonenko, is more interested in volcanic features that will take a bit longer to fine-tune with Moon Mappers.
Moon Mappers has two primary tasks -- "Simply Craters" and "Man vs. Machine." The former asks users to "simply" identify craters and if they see any particularly interesting features of interest to mark them, as well. The latter has some craters already marked via an automated detection algorithm. We're studying several things with this, and the initial images selected are meant to help us select images and fine-tune goals for the future as well as provide meaningful science that has not been done before. There are several abstracts below detailing these.
In addition, how we deal with the craters once identified became a difficult problem: They have to be clustered, but clustering codes generally only work in two dimensions. Craters have three -- latitude, longitude, and diameter. To this end, we developed a modification of a published code (DBSCAN) to cluster craters and this is discussed in an Apendix of our first paper which is currently in review, which describes how volunteers compare with experts in their crater identification.
Abstracts (NOT related to other papers):
Gugliucci, N., et al. (2014) Citizen Science with CosmoQuest: Science and Strategies. Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, 483, #283.
Gugliucci, N.E. et al. (2014) CosmoQuest Year 2: Citizen Science Progress, Motivations, and Education. Amer. Ast. Soc., 223, #448.09. Link to Abstract
Antonenko, I., Robbins, S.J., Gay, P.L., Lehan, C., and J. Moore. (2013). Effects of Incidence Angle on Crater Detection and the Lunar Isochron System: Preliminary Results from the CosmoQuest MoonMappers Citizen Science Project
Gay, P.L., Antonenko, I., Robbins, S.J., Bracey, G., Lehan, C., Moore, J., and D. Huang. (2012) CosmoQuest MoonMappers: Citizen Lunar Exploration
Gay, P.L., Bracey, G., Antonenko, I., Lehan, C., Moore, J., Foster, T., Robbins, S.J., and D. Huang. (2012). CosmoQuest MoonMappers: A Facility for Learning and Doing Science
Robbins, S.J., Antonenko, I., Lehan, C., Moore, J., Huang, D., and P.L. Gay. (2012). CosmoQuest MoonMappers: Cataloging the Moon
Robbins, S.J., Antonenko, I., Gay, P.L., Lehan, C., and J. Moore. (2012). Cataloging the Moon with the CosmoQuest Moon Mappers Citizen Science Project
Related Previous Abstracts:
Robbins, S.J., Chapman, C.R., and P.L. Gay. (2011). Moon Zoo: Lessons Learned from the First Year of Citizen Scientists Identifying Lunar Craters
Gay, P.L., et al. (2011) Exploring the Solar System: Ice Hunters, Mercury Zoo, and Planetary Investigators
Gay, P.L., Brown, S., Huang, D., Daus, C., Lehan, C., and S.J. Robbins. (2011). Moon Zoo: Making the Public Part of a Crater Survey Algorithm
Related Previous Papers
Joy, K., and 30 coauthors. (2011). Moon Zoo: Citizen Science in Lunar Exploration. Astronomy & Geophysics, 52:2, pp. 2.10-2.12, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4004.2011.52210.x.
Lunar Crater Database
2012-present, on and off pending funding
After completing my Mars crater database, I turned to Earth's moon as a next possible solar system object on which to map impact craters. I could invoke lessons learned, use the latest datasets, and I was able to use other project funds to generate a preliminary global database of lunar craters larger than about 10-15 km, numbering about 9500. I submitted this to several different programs over the years (2012-2015) but was not able to get funded.
In mid-2015, I was able to combine funds from numerous other grants and projects to generate a roughly 1,100,000-crater database of all impact craters larger than 1 km on the lunar surface.
This funding is only to map where these craters are and how large they are. My hope is that once that is completed, I will be able to leverage it for further funding to expand the information for each crater and use the resulting catalog to answer numerous science questions that can only be answered with a database like this.
Abstracts:
Robbins, S.J. (2016) Developing a Global Lunar Crater Database, Complete for Craters ≥1 km
