Monthly Meeting May – Join the Universe: We want YOU to become a Citizen Scientist 

 

I’ll share my journey from a very amateur astronomer to a Citizen Scientist active in the various Unistellar/eVscope network Citizen Science programmes, and to my own asteroid occultation observations. Citizen Science is real science, and my observations have ended up in scientific databases and been included in papers in Nature, the Minor Planet Bulletin and others. Along the way I’ll share some observation highlights from the year, including the DART mission, and I will introduce some of the many facets of Citizen Science astronomy.  

There is a whole Universe waiting to be discovered from your sofa or back yard – anyone, with or without equipment, can be a Citizen Scientist.

 

Michael Camilleri has had a long a varied career in Science and Technology and Data and Analytics. Originally studying Astrophysics (MSc) he switched to Atmospheric Physics (PhD) and built a research career in Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, before leaving the scientific work for the business world of Data and Analytics. After a lifelong casual interest in Astronomy that went no further than binoculars (Astrophysics didn’t require a telescope), I started observing with a small visual telescope during Covid, moved into Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EEA) and ended up with an eVscope which opened up the Citizen Science Universe to me.