Citizen scientists Chris and Helen Colvin from Ames, Iowa, and Daniel Gebhardt from Mainz, German participate in Einstein@Home, a distributive data program that involves a quarter of a million volunteers worldwide. They contributed their idle computers to analyze data gathered by the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and discovered a rotating pulsar. They remotely join NSF's Lisa-Joy Zgorski along with Einstein@Home director Bruce Allen and Arecibo researcher Jim Cordes. Their findings are published in the online journal Science Express (Aug. 12, 2010).

Credit: Cornell University/University of Mainz/Einstein@home/Iowa State University

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