Seeing the Bigger Picture: The Rosetta Mission Amateur Observing Campaign and Lessons for the Future

TL;DR

This paper reviews an amateur astronomer campaign supporting the Rosetta mission, highlighting its contributions, lessons learned, and recommendations for future collaborative comet observation efforts.

Contribution

It documents the amateur observing campaign for comet 46P, analyzes its effectiveness, and provides lessons to improve future citizen science initiatives in astronomy.

Findings

Amateur observations provided valuable data complementing space mission findings.

Clear objectives and communication are crucial for campaign success.

Regular feedback and recognition motivate continued participation.

Abstract

Amateur astronomers can make useful contributions to the study of comets. They add temporal coverage and multi-scale observations which can aid the study of fast-changing, and large-scale comet features. We document and review the amateur observing campaign set up to complement the Rosetta space mission, including the data submitted to date, and consider the campaign's effectiveness in the light of experience from previous comet amateur campaigns. We report the results of surveys of campaign participants, the amateur astronomy community, and schools who participated in a comet 46P observing campaign. We draw lessons for future campaigns which include the need for: clarity of objectives; recognising the wider impact campaigns can have on increasing science capital; clear, consistent, timely and tailored guidance; easy upload procedures with in-built quality control; and, regular communication, feedback and recognition.