Beyond Astronomy: Astronomy Projects (BOINC)
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There are many ways an amateur astronomer can contribute to the community! Even if you don't know any complex math or physics you can still help out, in many ways. One of the easiest ways is to let research facilities borrow your CPU time to help crunch their data. That's right, you can allow various research facilities to download data to your computer and it will calculate this data and send the completed work back to the facility. |
Boinc is a great program that you can use on multiple computers and it can accommodate multiple accounts. If you are interested in astronomy I would recommend Cosmology at home and Seti.
The BOINC client (see above) will show you how much work your computer has done and other interesting facts. There is an option to display information graphically if you can afford the extra pc power to do so.
You can use multiple computers to run various programs (see below). You can also connect to many different research facilities. each of these facilities keeps track of how much work your computers do and can show you the specs.
Be sure to check out BOINC if you want to help contribute to the world of astronomy and cosmology :)
