How can you discover new things in Astronomy without a PhD ?

[nukeman]

Title is a little strange I know, let me explain better. I am doing my undergrad by the way.

How can people, who for example are not in school for Physics/Astronomy, or don't have access to expensive telescopes, discover new things in Astronomy?

For example, a while back a nine year old girl discovered a new supernova, or something.

What can people do to possible discover new things in Astronomy?

Thanks!

[russ_watters]

Define "expensive"; a lot of amateur, backyard astronomers have discovered asteroids, comets, supernova, and exoplanets.

[turbo]

There are many, many publicly-available databases for a dedicated amateur to research. Here are a few. No telescope needed, just an Internet connection and an OK PC. You can create research projects that exploit these resources.

http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/FinderChart/
http://www1.ned.ipac.caltech.edu/
http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr/
http://www.sdss.org/

[RobinSky]

For example, a while back a nine year old girl discovered a new supernova, or something.



That girl discovered the supernova WITH a telescope. It's pretty hard to discover a supernova without a telescope, because a supernova that would be able to be seen without a telescope will not only be detected by you but also by others since it's "able-for-the-eyes".

So the only way the discover things would actually, at least of what I think, be with a telescope or a camera. By that you can discover outbursts of different types of dwarf novae, supernovae in other galaxies, just like the supernova that is going on in this writing moment in NGC 3972 (with a current magnitude around +14.0 which is VERY FAINT for the human eye and it requires big telescopes for about 10 inches or long exposures with a camera mounted on a scope to be seen).

But let's put these into categories. Things that you can discover is (there is more I'm sure):

* New Variable Stars
* Outbursts of different types of novae
* New asteroids
* Wrong amplitudes of variable stars that has been less observed
* Wrong periods of variable stars that has been less observed

Well, the best things I can come up with right now. I hope it helped.

Regards, Robin Andersson.

[Nik_2213]

There are 'citizen programs' such as the Galaxy Zoo consortium...

http://www.zooniverse.org/

You don't even need dark skies !!

[russ_watters]

My favorite is the story of Wolfgang Kloher: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=95973

[RobinSky]

You don't even need dark skies !!

Indeed, among the world's most active variable star observers lives in Birmingham and he has done over 300 000 observations from a very light polluted sky.

[ideasrule]

* New Variable Stars
* Outbursts of different types of novae
* New asteroids
* Wrong amplitudes of variable stars that has been less observed
* Wrong periods of variable stars that has been less observed


I think that's a pretty good list of discoveries, but if you want to contribute data that professional observatories simply don't have the time to capture, there are also a lot of options:

*Photometry of variable stars (see AAVSO)
*Astrometry on known but newly-discovered asteroids, to refine orbits
*Timing of lunar or asteroid occultations, to precisely measure the Moon's geography or the asteroid's orbit
*Meteor shower reports

[russ_watters]

I think that's a pretty good list of discoveries, but if you want to contribute data that professional observatories simply don't have the time to capture.... If you do have a lot of time on your hands and a good location, you might be able to serve as a real-time monitor for NASA and the scientific community in general. Chris Go lives on a mountain in Manilla and has a partnership with NASA where he helps them out by feeding them Jupiter photos something like a hundred days a year: http://jupiter.cstoneind.com/

He's got a pretty expensive mount and camera now, but his telescope is mid-level (a C-11, like me) and for a while he was using a mid-level camera (a DMK, like me). He's probably been published hundreds of times - whenever you see a Jupiter pic in the media, look at the citation. Odds are decent that it's one of his.