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REPORT COPYRIGHT VIOLATION IN REPLY
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Message Subject
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Rosetta Comet Orbiter -** 120 Icy Patches ** Philae Phones Home ** Ceres Fly Over Video ** New Coma Discovery ** Picture MOTHER LODE !
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Poster Handle
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Dr. Astro |
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Post Content
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I realize the policies may have differing charters perhaps but its interesting that the both the ISON observation campaign and now with 67P, amateur astronomers are encouraged to image these comets with the robotic telescopes that K Hall has mentioned.
Why not just post as many images as possible taken by the multi-milliion dollar equipment that US and European citizens paid for and let the amateur astronomers contribute any ideas that way?
Quoting: BG-Fan There are a multitude of reasons why amateur data is important. I myself have been participating in that partnership. Amateur data provides a wealth of astrometric and photometric data on the comet being studied. Over the course of the mission this will also allow changes in the comet over time seen by the ground to be correlated to the data collected up close by the spacecraft. Such a long term and intense observing campaign can be conducted without any taxpayer money at all by amateur astronomers like me. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Indeed! Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can continue to make real contributions. As for the "multi-million dollar equipment that US and European citizens paid for" - well, there's a limited amount of it, and it's in very high demand by professional astronomers for all sorts of projects, so observing time is carefully rationed (and paid for). It may sound like there's a lot of money spent on telescopes, but really, it's a drop in the ocean (compare it to what's spent on fast food or cosmetics every year!). I've worked with astronomers who get only a few hours of scope time per year to get data for their research, and amateurs can often help fill the gaps. I wish I had the time to do more, but I try when I can. I think maybe you and astro misunderstood what I was trying to say. I'm trying to focus on the present -- 67P Rosetta and the multi-million dollar equipment on Rosetta and Philae (when deployed). Why use earth bound or space bound equipment that isn't at the comet for data analysis (this is a unique experience)? For the reasons I already explained, that is why. What I'm saying is ESA/NASA Rosetta teams should upload much more visual data and even non-visual data for (as stated above in their Earth Science data sharing policy) the ability for specialists not on ESA/NASA Rosetta teams, amateurs and the general public to provide input.
Quoting: BGAh, what you're really saying is that all data from Rosetta should be made immediately available to everyone in the world and the principle investigators should not have any dibs on the data, thus rewarding those who are first to scoop and publish it rather than those who carefully planned, proposed, and conducted the mission. If that were the case it would reward those who "rush to publication" rather than thoughtful scientific work, and it would mean that there was no long term incentive to provide mission support in the first place. That would be a rather short sighted approach.
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