Amateur Astronomy - NOAO

Last week I wrote about Zooniverse, a great online platform designed to introduce amateur astronomers to real world research.  There are several huge sets of astronomical data that can't possibly be analyzed by a small team of professional astronomers, so help from the outside community is crucial.

Another great online research platform for amateur astronomers is one setup by the National Optical Astronomer Observatory (NOAO).

The NOAO platform doesn't have as many available projects as Zooniverse, but the projects it does have are not found on Zooniverse.  

NOAO Astronomy Research Projects & Data

If you're looking to get involved in real astronomy research and aren't finding anything you like at Zooniverse, I encourage you to check out the NOAO.  You may find a great project there!