Science & Amateur Astronomers

[Grant]

I've been wondering lately about what frontiers are left open for amateurs to help out with. I've been very impressed with the Galaxy Zoo project where the public can help classify astronomy data and I've wondered if theres other stuff we could be doing as a community to further science?

I know its very very hard (and rare) to discover something new but space is so large there must be some avenues left that us amateurs could work on? I know theres another thread thats talking about pooling our image data together and I wonder if we could extend this and pool our data, time and brains together to work together on certain astro projects.

One thing I've been contemplating is putting my software developers hat back on and building a piece of software that will give you total web based control of all of your equipment, you could login (securely) from anywhere to your observatory/garden setup, there would be plugins for all sorts of equipment and it would let you schedule exposure times, control your mount, see what your scope is looking at, view a live webcam image etc... etc.. One possible extension of this (I'm typing out loud now, this is all ad lib so I may be talking rubbish) is to have a bit of the software that is a co-operative setting, where the software works together with other people using the same software to pool your resources and look at the same object simulatenously and capture data together....

Anyways, I'm really interested to hear peoples thoughts on this

Cheers,

Grant

[Ant]

Sounds good mate. Not sure I'd e too happy in letting other control my scope remotely though.

Just imagine it now, taking images of say m13 and turn your back and some one has taken over the scope and is now imaging the double cluster

The software to control all the equipment is a great idea. Especially being web based, could be run over a wireless network. I think it has a lot of potential - I'd certainly be willing to help out in any way that I could.

Ant

[Grant]

It'd have to be an option, that you tick so others can access it, a bit like the skylive stuff...

The other way I thought about it, alot of people run the seti software on their computers, this could be like that but rather than using your spare computer time, it uses your spare telescope time, imagine if we could set it up so we do a full sky survey between us!

[geppetto]

In it's broadest sense that sounds exciting Grant 8)

Will put the thinking cap on

[Whippy]

It's a good idea mate, but is it limited to people who have their gear permanently set up? Ie: In an obs with imaging kit. I reckon that's less than a third of people on SGL. It might be a bit of a faff if it's just a 'normal' setup. What about a chat room where users could make requests to the people with the relevant kit?

I like the idea of doing a full sky survey and maybe putting a mosaic together of some serious images that would need hardcore rendering and that's where a lot of people could get involved with their spare processing cycles a la SETI.

Just a thought.

Tony..

[Ant]

Now if you could design / write a webpage that unpacks, sets up and polar aligns my mount/scope I'd be very interested.

Seriously, it would be limited to people with a permanant setup, with a skywatcher PRO mount (as a minimum), always connected to a PC with broadband.

I suspect that is less than 5% of the members of SGL.

But that would still be 55 people! Imagine being able to connect to Rogers setup in his dome while he was away in suffolk? How good would that be... till it started to rain and the dome wont close... [removed word]!

Ant

[Grant]

well the suffer would hopefully be usedful to all sorts of people, if it provided similar functions to dslr focus and other bits of software, plugins could be written for all sorts of equipment so you could use it for your own specific needs, e.g. somebody might use it just for focusing, another might use it to control their scope...

I personally would use it as an observatory server, so I can manage all aspects of my setup over the web, that way I can be indoors in the warm and it can do its thing. I know theres software that does that already but all the stuff I've tried so far is 'bitty' as in, one bit to do the camera, another to do focusing, another to do mount control another to do guiding... it'd be nice if all these bits had a plugin nature, all controlled from one program, I simply enable and configure the bits I want...

Towards the other part of my post though, what areas of science are left for us amateurs? I know Ian does double star measurements which look very interesting and could be worth exploration, are there any other areas of astronomy that are still frontiers open to us?

[GazOC]

Variable star monitoring, minor planet (asteroid) discovery, comet discovery, (super) nova discovery spring to mind. I'm sure there are others...

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

I dont know about you guys but my personal dream is to discover an exoplanet. After my initial exposure to the science on the Open University course I was stunned to discover that students had been taking part in a sky survey that had managed to identify a large number of probable exoplanetary systems through the repeated monitoring of variable stars with sensitive enough equipment. It wasn't with humungous scopes and SBIG cameras, it was with 10" Meades and Starlight Express level equipment. Amateur equipment these days is reaching quite amazing levels when you think of what it is capable of, and it may even be possible to use spectrographic equipment to discover the wobble of planets through the movement of the spectral lines. Imagine being a part of a hobbyist group that actually helped discover new worlds? Worth looking in to?

[lunator]

Variable star monitoring, minor planet (asteroid) discovery, comet discovery, (super) nova discovery spring to mind. I'm sure there are others...

Don't forget double star measurement