Quote:
Originally Posted by ZeroID
I put my name down for the comet 'job' but from the details they have recently provided they are looking for people with experience and documented comet hunting experience. High end amateurs. Enrolment is finished anyway. Selection of the 'few' is taking place now.
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I think you might be referring to the PACA (Pro-Am Collaborative Astronomy) Facebook comet groups, and specifically the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko collaboration in association with the Rosetta Mission. I don't know if NASA has its own portal into the group/s, maybe that's where you encountered this.
I'm a member of several but about low-end as you can get, 4.5" Tasco reflector and a DSLR & lens!
The only qualifications are that you're interested and that you can provide some original data be it visual observations or images, up to the 'high-end' of photometry, astrometry, hi-res spectra etc. I don't know of any selection process (or I certainly wouldn't have made it!
), size limits or enrolment deadlines - the groups are very friendly and encouraging of all levels of participation. However they are Closed groups because they kept getting 'spammed' with general astronomy stuff, diluting the comet stuff - they are special interest after all.
If you're still keen (or anyone in IIS who's keen for that matter) and can contribute something, pm me and I'll put you forward. 67P will be a difficult one though, just starting to rise in southern morning skies now and it will remain a faint, low and difficult target right through till perihelion. But better in the south than north and I know they're keen on getting southern observers involved.
There is also a PACA group for transients like novae, supernovae, dwarf novae etc. Again closed but I forgot to step back when they wanted co-admins so I can actually let you in!
Search FB for PACA_Transients.
Getting back to the OP, comet visual observing is something that is easy to do and is valuable to science. Light curves composed of hundreds and even thousands of individual observations of a comet submitted by amateurs all over the world are permanent records of the behaviour of a comet. The more observations, the better and more accurate the light curve.
Cheers -