Participate in any of the below research topics

[RJN]

The posts below relate collaborative research ventures that anyone may participate in. A good way to participate is to follow the suggestions of the lead poster, or to make concrete and constructive suggestions as to how the research could best continue. Dissenting thoughts are OK, but posts in this forum should be generally focused on helping the project proceed to a successful completion. Posts made only to convey the opinion of the poster on the general research topic are best placed elsewhere.

- RJN

[RJN]

Here is an interesting article for those who might consider themselves "only" amateurs at science:

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/rank-amateur.html

Making a distinction between professional and amateur in science is artificial: what matters is the 'what' of science not the 'who'. And amateurs have by their very nature something that professionals don't need to have: passion.

[wonderboy]

Brilliant! I'm an absolute amateur when it comes to science, but even fully fledged scientists were amateurs at some point. Everyone needs passion to excel in a field.

[MeteorWayne]

The majority of long term data about meteor showers (which come from comets) is from amateurs.

To begin the process of learning how to report what you observe, I suggest the North American Meteor Network site:

http://www.namnmeteors.org/

Once you learn the basics, then you can report your observations directly to the International Meteor Organization:

http://www.imo.net/

If anyone needs any advice during the learning process, feel free to contact me. I have hundreds of hours of observing time, and thousands of meteors in my database.

While video data is increasingly valuable, it always needs to be calibrated against the decades long visual record to correlate the two.

MW

[MeteorWayne]

Well, I appear to be on a buttered roll, so here's another citizen science project, CoCoRaHS. All you need to do is set up an inexpensive rain gauge in your yard, and read it daily.

http://www.cocorahs.org/

It is EXTREMELY valuable in forecasting flooding, drought, etc. The NWS and State Climatologists use the data every day.

[Chris Peterson]

While video data is increasingly valuable, it always needs to be calibrated against the decades long visual record to correlate the two.

Video and radar meteor data now outnumber visual data. For the last few years, it is the visual record that has been calibrated and corrected against instrumental data, not the other way around. (I don't mean to suggest that visual observations aren't still valuable.)

[ElenoreWinstead]

Brilliant! I'm an absolute amateur when it comes to science, but even fully fledged scientists were amateurs at some point. Everyone needs passion to excel in a field.

I had been thinking about reading The Martian ever since I watched the movie and finally I read it.