Saturn Nature Communications Paper

[Quark (Trevor)]

It is with great pride that I am able to announce, with the lifting of the media embargo on November 8th at 2100 Australian Eastern time that I have been published in the very prestigious peer reviewed journal “Nature Communications” as a co-author.
“AN ENDURING RAPIDLY MOVING STORM AS A GUIDE TO SATURN’S EQUATORIAL JET’S COMPLEX STRUCTURE”
Furthermore it is certainly a thrill to see my Broken Hill Observatory listed with the author affiliations alongside some of the leading professional institutions (regarding planetary science) in the world.
What makes this even better is that the article was published on November 8th, my 65th birthday.
I note that Nature has 25 editors; full time professionals and they receive over 11,000 submissions per year. The editors reject approx 65% of papers immediately, sending approx 35% for formal peer review with only 8% accepted for publication.
It is most heartening to see professionals recognizing the contribution that amateurs can make to planetary science.
For many years I have been tracking atmospheric detail, structure on the gas giants, in particular Saturn, which I have specialized in. I run my own spreadsheets and generate drift charts which enables a level of analysis. I have worked long term with Cassini RPWS (Radio & Plasma Wave Science) & Cassini ISS (Imaging Science Subsystems) and have tracked various features at Saturn, long term, for various researchers including Professor Agustin Sanchez-Lavega the lead author of this paper.
Of interest to the IIS community I also note that included in the “Acknowledgements” of this paper are Australian planetary imagers, Anthony Wesley & Phil Miles who would be well known to the IIS Solar System Imaging section.

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13262

Regards
Trevor

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Good on you Trevor - hearty congratulations and well done.

[RobF (Rob)]

Fantastic work Trevor! I think you can be rightly "chuffed".

[xelasnave]

Hi Trevor,
That is certainly something to be very very proud about.
Congratulations on your most outstanding achievement.
I bet thats was the best birthday you have had.
Alex

[Stonius (Markus)]

Good on you Trevor. It doesnt get much better than that 😊

[pfitzgerald (Paul)]

Congratulations Trevor and well done - a truly outstanding achievement.

Paul

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Excellent work, well done !!

[gary]

Hi Trevor,

Hope you have been keeping well.

Belated Happy Birthday!

That is wonderful news. Congratulations!

Best Regards

Gary
Mount Kuring-Gai NSW

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Magnificent!! That's a wonderful reward for what was, I'm sure, countless hours of work. It's also testament to what can be achieved with well targeted research. The fact the Nature accepted the paper, rather than 'just' an astronomy journal, is testament to its broad significance.


I imagine the last 11 months, since the paper was submitted, has been a looong time and especially the last 6 weeks since acceptance. I've never directly experienced such anticipation but, because of where I work, I knew about 'The Hobbit' of Flores a year before the paper was published. There was a School seminar where the findings were announced. We were told that, if there was any prior announcement of the find, Nature would refuse to publish. So we all had to keep that bombshell under our hat for 12 months. My wife was quite unhappy that I didn't even tell her!

[rally]

Congratulations on the wonderful recognition for all your enduring work and committment to this field.
Its great to see this happen and its always uplifting to hear about the things "amateurs" can contribute. Truth is you arent an amateur any more !
well done.

[Dennis]

That is wonderful news Trevor, richly deserved indeed. Your skills and dedication are inspirational.

Cheers

Dennis

[markbakovic]

Congratulations! And in Nature Comms too, what a way to start your publication history! (I'm assuming it's your first publication, apologies if not)

There is a growing trend in the "professional" science community to try to make more and effective use of "amateur" research (though Trevor's contribution sounds a bit more professional-grade than what that usually means), with e.g. Zooniverse etc. (they list some citizen scientists by name on the papers from time to time, e.g. the Tabby's star paper has 2 amateurs on it). Astronomy is a great field for this, exactly because of communities like IIS, (and e.g. the standard of equipment owned by some of their members!). We have projects in the works for enabling some of this, including a research-grade exoplanet-hunting spectrograph the size of an esky which we hope to get down to "amateur-level" pricing per-unit, and Google is investing in even cheaper technology to distribute astronometry data gathering for under US$5k per unit, so it's something you'll (hopefully) definitely see more of. All, in no small part, due to the dedicated "semi-pros" like Trevor who lead the way!

[astroron (Ron)]

Well done Trevor, what a great achievement
You are right to be justifiably proud of inclusion in this very important paper.
Cheers

[JA]

Congratulations Trevor. Well Done

Best
JA

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

Congratulations. Very impressive.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Thanks very much to all for the well wishes, the number of professionals seeking out amateur work for use in Pro/Am collaborations is certainly increasing.

There is a link at the bottom of my original post to my website. On it I have a section for my Publications & Presentations. I have previously made it as a co-author in Nature, along with various AGU Journals. My work has often featured in the annual "European Planetary Science Congress" in Rome, Graz in Austria, Madrid in Spain and at University College in London.

I enjoy what I do and would highly recommend it to other amateur imagers.

Regards
Trevor