Our Crowdfunding Groups
This crowdfunding campaign has ended, but you can still support SETI at UCLA by clicking here.
Dear SETI donor,
A year and a half ago, you partnered with the UCLA SETI Group to enable a search for technosignatures. I am thrilled to report that the results of our 2018-2019 search are now in press at the Astronomical Journal. Among other results, our article quantifies the advantages of our search compared to the $100 million Breakthrough Listen (BL) initiative in terms of hit rate density (200 times larger), sensitivity (up to 25 times better), and frequency drift rate coverage (2–4 times larger). You can find more details about our article in the latest edition of the UCLA SETI Group newsletter.
Your support of our search made it possible for us to send a compelling grant proposal to NASA. The agency awarded the grant and the UCLA SETI Group will now receive funding from NASA to search for technosignatures! The budget excludes equipment and telescope costs and will mainly fund one graduate student for three years, but I am ecstatic anyway! Since the termination of the High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) in 1993, NASA has hardly funded any SETI efforts, and most of such funding has gone to instrumentation development. NASA's long-awaited renewal of SETI support is an exciting turning point. I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for partnering with us and helping make it happen. Our NASA funding is slated to start on January 1, 2021, and we will search for technosignatures around newly discovered exoplanets. If you wish to receive occasional updates about our progress, consider subscribing to our newsletter.
Thank you again for your generous support,
Jean-Luc Margot
Dear SETI donors,
We are writing to express sincere thanks for your generous contributions to our SETI crowdfunding campaign.
Thanks to your gifts, we will be able to use the Green Bank Telescope on Friday April 26, 2019 from 3 pm to 5 pm PDT. We have selected 16 Sun-like stars near the plane of the Galaxy for our observations, and we can't wait to collect our data. These observations will result in approximately 5 terabytes of data that we will analyze during the rest of the quarter.
In the first three weeks of the course, we have learned about radio astronomy and celestial coordinate systems. We have used the Python programming language to compute the motion of celestial sources in the sky at Green Bank and determine which sources will be observable during our observing session. We learned about stars, exoplanets, and habitable zones, and we used astronomical databases to select the planetary systems that we will be observing. All the students in the course (18 undergraduate students and 2 graduate students) have been able to use a fast new computer to do all these calculations. The purchase of this new computer was also made possible by your generous gifts, so we are doubly grateful!
Please find a link to our special thank you video of a UCLA 8-clap embedded in this message. Thank you.
UCLA Spring 2019 SETI students
Dear SETI Donor,
Thank you for the tremendous support you have shown our campaign! With your help, we have made it more than halfway to our goal well before the campaign is scheduled to end.
In fact, with the donations we already received, we can fully fund the telescope time we need for the Spring 2019 SETI Class. This means we will be able to partake in a fundamental process to SETI research: picking target stars, designing an observation procedure, and performing our very own observations with the Green Bank Telescope! We are extremely grateful for this opportunity, which was only made possible by you, our generous donor.
As someone who believes in our cause, we turn to you once again to ask for your help in recruiting others who are interested in our efforts by sharing our campaign link - spark.ucla.edu/SETI. With your help, we can push our campaign to the next level. We still have some ways to go before we reach our campaign goal, but we believe that we can make it with your support.
Please take a moment to share our story with anyone you think may be interested, and thank you for all the support you have already shown us.
- Lujia, Astrid, and Paul
All gifts bring us closer to answering this question. You will receive a special thank you video of an 8-clap from the Spring 2019 SETI class. (fully tax deductible)
The world will know that you were part of our search. You will receive a shout-out in the UCLA SETI Group newsletter, and all previous perks. (fully tax deductible)
We are grateful for your generosity. You will receive a thank-you card signed by students in the Spring 2019 SETI class, and all previous perks. (fully tax deductible)
Do you have a burning SETI-related question that you'd like to be answered? Ask a question about our project via email and you will receive a response from Prof. Margot and/or the SETI team, and all previous perks. (fully tax deductible)
Now you can show the world that you're partnering with UCLA on SETI research! You will receive an honorary SETI research partner certificate and you will be acknowledged by name in our peer-reviewed publication, and all previous perks. (fully tax deductible)
Let's get together - here on Earth. With your $500 donation, you'll meet the students whose research you've supported and join them for the observation run and/or the final presentations, plus all previous perks. (fully tax deductible)
Time to go deep into all things SETI with an expert. You will be invited to lunch with Professor Margot. Ask all your primordial soup and other questions, and all previous perks. ($990 tax deductible)
You're out of this world. You may select a source from a predefined list of planetary systems for us to observe with the Green Bank Telescope. We will perform the observation in your name and we will send you a report with a few of the most interesting signals found during the scan of your source after the data have been processed, and all previous perks. ($2490 tax deductible) Disclaimer: the UCLA SETI Group does not have the authority to formally name a celestial source – only the International Astronomical Union has that authority.