Tuesday

In this talk we will introduce the unique HOYS citizen science project which has been running for more than six years. It is an ‘unusual’ citizen science project where the majority of the data for our research into star and planetary formation is delivered by amateur astronomers, located in 13 countries worldwide. We will discuss the lessons learned in starting and growing a project such as this, and the need for vital resources such as staff time and computing infrastructure. This includes how we continually motivate participants to continue contributing to a long-term endeavour using our social media presence, presentations, and publication co-authorship. Finally, we will discuss our future plans to involve participants in data analysis via a galaxy zoo type citizen science project.