The professional astronomer or astrophysicist is a pretty recent phenomenon. In the past, astronomy was often performed by nobility and extremely enthusiastic amateurs. Take William Herschel: by trade a classically trained musician, but as an amateur astronomer he discovered Uranus and was the first to observe binary star systems, among other things. Although it seems like the scientific exploration of our universe is now in the hands of full-time career astro-professionals, a ton of really valuable science is still done by people with proper day jobs. Today I want to talk about some of the stunning contributions still being made by citizen scientists, and the contributions YOU can make.
Links to citizen science programs:
JunoCam: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam
AAVSO: www.aavso.org
Zooniverse: www.zooniverse.org
Galaxy Zoo www.galaxyzoo.org
Backyard Worlds: backyardworlds.org
Seti@Home: setiathome.berkeley.edu
Einstein@Home einsteinathome.org
MilkyWay@Home milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway
Hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Written by Drew Rosen and Matt O’Dowd
Produced by Rusty Ward
Graphics by Kurt Ross
Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
