
In praise of 'small astronomy' - okket
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/newsroom/2016/09/21/praise-small-astronomy/
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antognini
Astronomy as a field has been relatively friendly to small collaborations,
particularly when compared to its bigger sibling, physics. But the trend
towards larger projects is real and can be seen in the authorship statistics
[1].

But I feel that it is oversimplifying somewhat to compare big projects to
little projects, as the two aren't necessarily in opposition. Oftentimes large
projects are collecting data to answer a small number of important questions,
but in the process of doing so produce data that is useful for individual
astronomers. While those big, important questions may be useful for justifying
the project to grant agencies, everyone knows that the real value is in the
(unpredictable) science that the dataset inspires. SDSS is a good example of
this. (In fact, my very first summer research project as an undergraduate took
advantage of SDSS data.)

It's true that once those driving questions have been answered the big players
look for the next big, shiny project. But the data is still there and is
accessible to the community. That makes it possible for an astronomer to
answer interesting questions without needing to expend the telescope time and
money to collect data that are already there.

But not all large projects are like that. The risk is if the field moves away
from large projects which are more or less glorified catalogs (e.g., SDSS,
Gaia, LSST), towards large projects that don't offer much in the way of
ancillary science to individual astronomers (LIGO and Planck come to mind
here, but someone more knowledgable about those projects should correct me if
I'm wrong).

[1]: [https://orbitingfrog.com/2012/08/04/authorship-in-
astronomy/](https://orbitingfrog.com/2012/08/04/authorship-in-astronomy/)

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M_Grey
I don't know, high energy/particle physics has had this issue for a while, and
it seems to be doing alright and attracting plenty of new minds into the fray.
To be honest, "small astronomy" probably is likely to have a lot more value
than the various small fusion experiments people build too (and those are
still very cool).

