OpenAstro — Marketing and PR Strategy¶

This document covers the full outreach and communications strategy across all three stages of OpenAstro's development. It is planning documentation, not copy. Assumptions: Stage 1 is archival pipeline with a paper; Stage 2 is the volunteer network live; Stage 3 is owned hardware deployed.

Part 1: What Comparable Projects Did (And What Worked)¶

Understanding these five projects is essential before planning anything. Each one solved a piece of the same problem: convincing non-professionals to do real science.

PANOPTES (Project Astronomy: New Objects, Processes, and Transiting Exoplanets Study)¶

What it is: A citizen science network using ~$5,000 units (two Canon DSLRs + 85mm f/1.4 lenses in a weatherproof enclosure) to detect exoplanet transits.
Scale: ~30 active units globally as of 2024, hosted by amateur astronomers, schools, and small observatories.
What worked for community building: The hardware is the hook — units are manufactured and loaned to participants, so the commitment is operational, not financial. Hosts feel ownership of a physical object, which drives engagement more reliably than software-only participation. The project published credible results (arXiv:1406.6119 and subsequent data releases), which validated the hardware concept.
What didn't scale: The hardware cost and logistics of unit deployment limits network size. Recruiting is relationship-heavy. The project never broke out of the core enthusiast community into broader science press.
Lesson for OpenAstro: Hardware co-ownership creates stronger retention than software alone. The PANOPTES model (we give you a unit, you host it) is directly applicable to OpenAstro Stage 3. The paper-first approach also validates the platform before recruiting.

AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers)¶

What it is: The largest citizen science astronomical data repository in the world. 23+ million observations from 2,000+ observers in 108 countries.
URL: https://www.aavso.org
What worked: Longevity (founded 1911) built trust. The Alert Notice system — professional astronomers request a campaign, AAVSO sends alerts to observers, data flows to the requester — is the exact model OpenAstro should replicate. Observer codes (a personal identifier used in publications) give contributors a traceable scientific identity. The quarterly journal (JAAVSO) publishes work using AAVSO data, and many papers list amateur contributors.
What motivated participants: Survey data consistently shows AAVSO members participate for three reasons in order: (1) contributing to real science, (2) the community and sense of belonging, (3) the technical challenge. Recognition through observer codes is critical.
Lesson for OpenAstro: The Alert Notice model is proven. Implement it from day one of Stage 2. Observer codes (or equivalent) create a public scientific identity that participants care about protecting.

Global Meteor Network (GMN)¶

What it is: A distributed network of ~700 all-sky cameras (Sony IMX291 sensors on Raspberry Pis, ~$150/station) in 30+ countries recording meteor trajectories and calculating orbital parameters.
URL: https://globalmeteornetwork.org
What worked: Extreme low cost of entry. A participant can join for ~$150 in hardware that they build from a guide. The software (RMS — Raspberry Meteor Station) is open source and fully automated. Data is automatically uploaded. The participant does almost nothing after setup. Publications accumulate regularly (Denis Vida leads authorship; contributors are acknowledged). The GMN Discord has hundreds of active members coordinating observations.
Motivation structure: Participants like seeing "their station" contribute to a catalog. The GMN publishes shower forecasts based on network data, and contributors can watch real events their hardware detected get turned into orbital calculations in near-real-time.
Lesson for OpenAstro: Automation is the key retention tool. If a participant has to actively intervene each night, they churn. If the station runs itself and they just wake up to a digest, they stay indefinitely. This is the model for OpenAstro Stage 3 hardware.

GOTO (Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer)¶

What it is: A professional-led array of telescopes (originally at Warwick, now multiple sites) doing automated follow-up of gravitational wave events from LIGO/Virgo. Not a citizen science project.
Why it's relevant: GOTO's communication strategy when they publish is instructive. The "47 telescopes, N countries" framing they use in press releases — where the distributed nature of the observation is the lead — consistently gets picked up by science press. The story is not about any single result; the story is about the network doing what a single telescope cannot.
Lesson for OpenAstro: The PR frame for any OpenAstro publication should always foreground the network. "Observers in [N] countries, using telescopes from $500 to $10,000, combined to produce this result" is the angle. This is what drives coverage in Nature News, BBC Science, Ars Technica — not the science result itself, but the fact that this kind of distributed science works.

Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO)¶

What it is: A network of 25 robotic telescopes at 6 sites globally, operated as a nonprofit. Provides time to professional and advanced amateur researchers.
URL: https://lco.global
What worked: The key innovation was automation and time-sharing — the same scheduler that sends a professional's supernova follow-up also handles an amateur's exoplanet transit. Equal access to the queue creates a sense of community across skill levels.
Education outreach model: The LCOGT Global Sky Partners program linked schools to the telescope network. This generated enormous press because it was visually compelling and easy to understand. A year 8 student in Leeds using a telescope in Chile is a story.
Lesson for OpenAstro: School and university partnerships are a press multiplier out of proportion to their scientific contribution. A single partnership with one university — "undergraduates at [University] contributed data to this paper" — is worth far more in coverage and credibility than the data itself.

Part 2: Amateur Astronomy Communities to Reach¶

Forums (High Priority)¶

Cloudy Nights — https://www.cloudynights.com - 190,000+ registered users. The single most important astronomy forum in the world. - Key subforums: "Amateur Astronomy & Science" (formerly "Citizen Science"), "CMOS Astrophotography," "Photometry." The "Time-Sensitive Astronomy" subforum is the direct target for Stage 2. - Posting strategy: Do not announce the project until you have something to show. First posts should be technical contributions to existing threads (help with photometry calibration, etc.). Build reputation over 2-3 months before a project announcement. Announcements from accounts with no post history are ignored or treated as spam. - Rules: No commercial advertising in science subforums. Framing as an open science project is fine.

IceInSpace — https://www.iceinspace.com.au - The dominant Australian and NZ amateur astronomy forum. Particularly important for Stage 2 because Australian longitude coverage is sparse in most networks. - 50,000+ users. Active but less moderated than CN; posting is slightly easier. - Key subforums: "IIS Science Project" and "Astro-imaging."

Stargazers Lounge — https://stargazerslounge.com - UK-focused. 60,000+ members. Important for European coverage. - Tone is more casual than Cloudy Nights.

Astronomie.de / Sternfreunde — German-language forum. Secondary priority but Germany has a dense concentration of equipped observers.

Reddit¶

r/astrophotography (1.4M members): Do not treat this as a recruitment channel. Post results, beautiful visualizations, or science stories. Mention OpenAstro only if directly relevant. Upvoted posts here can go viral.
r/Astronomy (2.5M members): Science news format. A post about an OpenAstro result framed as "amateur network detects [X]" could reach a large audience.
r/telescopes (215K): Equipment-focused. Relevant for technical onboarding content.
r/citizenscience (50K): Small but directly targeted. List the project here.
r/exoplanets: Niche but high engagement from the right demographic.

Note: Reddit self-promotion rules are strict. Anything that reads like advertising gets removed. Posts that contribute genuine scientific content get engagement. The strategy is content-first, project-second.

Astronomy Clubs and Societies¶

Organization	Country	Members	Relevance
British Astronomical Association (BAA)	UK	3,500+	High. Has active variable star and campaign sections.
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC)	Canada	5,000+	Medium. Journal JRASC is an authorship opportunity.
Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)	USA	1,500+	Medium. Good for educator outreach.
Astronomical League (AL)	USA	20,000+	High. 250+ affiliated clubs with program chairs.
Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde (VVS)	Belgium	2,000+	Medium. Very active photometry section.
Astronomische Vereinigung Tirol	Austria	Medium	Active visual and photometric observers.

The Astronomical League's "Night Sky Network" directory (https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov) lists 400+ clubs in the US with contact information. This is the fastest path to bulk club outreach.

Publications¶

Sky & Telescope — https://skyandtelescope.org - The flagship English-language amateur astronomy publication. Print + web. ~50,000 print subscribers, much larger web audience. - Publishes citizen science news, "Pro-Am" collaboration features, and equipment reviews. - Contact: news@skyandtelescope.org for press inquiries. The editorial team also covers the "Variable Stars" column and is interested in AAVSO-adjacent science. - An OpenAstro result would be most likely covered in the "News" or "Community" sections. A letter to the editor from a contributor about their experience is another path.

Astronomy Magazine — https://astronomy.com - Similar audience to S&T, slightly more accessible tone. 100,000+ print circulation. - Covers citizen science projects more regularly than S&T.

Astronomy Now — https://astronomynow.com - UK-based. Important for European audience.

Journal of the AAVSO (JAAVSO) — https://www.aavso.org/jaavso - Peer-reviewed but aimed at pro-am community. Accepts papers where amateurs are co-authors or primary authors. The correct journal for a first OpenAstro methods paper if the result is photometry-focused.

Practical Astronomy — UK. Print-focused. Secondary priority.

YouTube Channels¶

These are channels that would potentially cover OpenAstro or whose audience is the target demographic. They are not partners to recruit immediately — they are publications to pitch once there is a story.

Dr. Becky (Becky Smethurst, Oxford) — 700K+ subscribers. Covers research news. Citizen science results with strong science stories are her format.
Anton Petrov — 1M+ subscribers. Covers research news daily. Reaches a large casual science audience.
Scott Manley — 800K+ subscribers. Strong technical depth. Covered distributed science projects before.
Eyes on the Sky — Fred Espenak. Amateur astronomy focus, smaller but highly targeted audience.
Astro Backyard — Astrophotography focused. Useful for recruiting imagers to the platform.
Practical Astrophotography (Paul Byrne) — UK-based. Medium audience, high relevance.

Pitch strategy for YouTube: Do not reach out cold with a recruitment ask. Pitch a story when there is a result. "We combined data from [N] amateur telescopes in [N] countries to do X — here's how it worked" is the format.

Part 3: The Citizen Science Platform Ecosystem¶

Zooniverse¶

URL: https://www.zooniverse.org
What it is: The largest citizen science platform, hosting 100+ projects. Primarily used for image classification tasks (Galaxy Zoo, Planet Hunters, etc.). 2.3 million registered volunteers.
Should OpenAstro list here? Conditionally yes, but only for specific tasks. Zooniverse is not suitable for hardware recruitment (volunteers are online classifiers, not telescope owners). It is suitable for a specific sub-task: having volunteers visually classify light curves as "transit candidate," "variable star artifact," "eclipsing binary," etc. This is a well-established Zooniverse use case. A Zooniverse project would require OpenAstro to build a simple classification interface and provide a data pipeline feeding it.
The tradeoff: A Zooniverse project produces a credibility signal ("citizen scientists helped analyze data") but does not recruit telescope operators. It should be a Stage 2 parallel project, not a primary recruitment tool.
Contact: zooniverse.org/lab allows project creation. Larger projects with institutional affiliation move faster through review.

SciStarter¶

URL: https://scistarter.org
What it is: A directory of citizen science projects, maintained by Arizona State University. Lists ~3,000 projects. Searchable by location, time commitment, and topic.
Should OpenAstro list here? Yes. Unambiguously. Listing is free, quick (a basic listing is a form submission), and the SEO benefits are real. SciStarter ranks well for "citizen science astronomy" searches. More importantly, SciStarter has partnerships with science museums and libraries — when they do programming, they pull from SciStarter's database.
Cost: Free for basic listing. Partnership tiers exist but are not required.
Action: Submit a project listing as soon as there is a public-facing website for OpenAstro. Do this before any other platform outreach.

NASA Citizen Science Projects¶

URL: https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience
What it is: NASA's official directory of citizen science projects, many hosted by NASA or NASA-funded researchers. Being listed here confers significant credibility.
Should OpenAstro list here? This requires either a NASA grant or a formal collaboration with a NASA-funded researcher. It is not a self-service listing. The path to being listed is through a grant (see Funding section) or through a partnership with a funded PI who adds OpenAstro as a component of their program. Flag this as a Stage 2-3 goal, not Stage 1.

Considerations for Building Independently¶

Arguments for building independently (not on Zooniverse): 1. OpenAstro's core product is hardware integration, not image classification. Zooniverse doesn't help with that. 2. Building a standalone platform means OpenAstro owns the data, the relationship, and the brand. 3. Dependency on Zooniverse creates a single point of failure for community communication.

Arguments for using platforms: 1. Zooniverse provides access to 2.3M registered volunteers without recruitment effort. 2. SciStarter provides passive discovery. 3. The legitimacy signal from being listed on established platforms matters to grant reviewers.

Recommendation: List on SciStarter immediately. Build a Zooniverse sub-project for light curve classification in Stage 2 (it recruits a different user type than telescope operators — data analysts). Build OpenAstro's primary network independently. These are not mutually exclusive.

Part 4: What Makes a Compelling Pitch to Amateur Astronomers¶

This is the most important section for recruiting telescope operators. Based on comparable project data and the existing recruitment file in this vault, the following elements are what convert interest to action.

1. Co-authorship as the Primary Incentive¶

The single most powerful incentive for scientifically motivated amateurs is authorship on a peer-reviewed paper. This is well-documented across AAVSO, ExoClock, and Pro-Am follow-up campaigns.

The pitch is not "we will acknowledge you." The pitch is "your name on a paper." These are not equivalent. Acknowledgment sections are read by nobody. Author lists are indexed by ADS, ORCID, and Google Scholar. A participant can point to an ADS entry with their name as evidence that they did real science. This matters to amateur observers in a way that is difficult to overstate.

Framing: Do not bury co-authorship as a benefit. Lead with it. "Contribute 200 hours of accepted data and your name goes on the paper" should be on the homepage, not in the FAQ.

2. The Urgency of Alerts¶

Real-time transient alerts are fundamentally different from routine monitoring campaigns in one key respect: they create a story. An observer who receives an alert, slews their telescope in 15 minutes, captures a kilonova optical counterpart for 40 minutes before it fades, and then sees that observation appear in a paper six months later has a story they will tell at every star party for the rest of their lives. That story recruits other observers more effectively than any advertisement.

Implementation: The alert system (Stage 2) should be designed to make this experience as visceral as possible. Push notifications with countdown timers ("GW event: 47 minutes of observable window remaining at your location"), immediate confirmation that data was received, and a follow-up email linking to the paper when it is published.

This is the difference between participants who are "active" and participants who are "evangelists." The goal is evangelists.

A live world map showing active stations is the most effective single piece of marketing material a distributed science project can have. SETI@home had a version of this. SatNOGS has one (https://network.satnogs.org/). The Global Meteor Network has one (https://globalmeteornetwork.org/globalmap/).

The dashboard should show, in real time or near-real-time: active stations, their locations, what they are currently observing, and cumulative network statistics (total observations, papers published, distinct targets covered). This serves three functions: 1. Recruits new observers ("I want my dot on that map") 2. Retains existing observers (identity and belonging) 3. Functions as PR collateral (the screenshot of the map is the press image)

Design the map as a primary product, not a secondary analytics page.

4. The "Urgency and Exclusivity" Frame for Transients¶

Some of the best-retained observers in comparable networks are those who participated in a one-time, non-repeatable event — a supernova, a kilonova, an asteroid occultation shadow crossing their specific location. These events have two properties that create deep engagement: urgency (you either catch it tonight or never) and exclusivity (your location was required). A network that delivers both regularly creates the kind of participant who does not churn.

Practical implementation: The scheduler for Stage 2 should identify upcoming events where observer location is decisive, and send targeted alerts only to observers in the relevant shadow path or visibility window. "You are one of 3 observers positioned to catch this asteroid shadow" is a more compelling message than a broadcast alert.

Part 5: Stage-Specific PR Plan¶

Stage 1: Pipeline Exists, Paper Submitted¶

Goal: Establish credibility. Recruit the first 20-50 observers before a live network exists.

What to communicate: - "Here is a paper produced using public archival data from amateur telescopes. This is what we're building toward." - The methods paper should be submitted to JAAVSO, RNAAS (Research Notes of the AAS), or as an arXiv preprint. The bar is low; the bar exists. - Post the paper to r/Astronomy and r/astrophotography with a brief explanation. The story is "we wrote software that can calibrate and combine data from heterogeneous amateur telescopes." - Post a Cloudy Nights thread in the Citizen Science subforum asking for feedback on the calibration methodology. This is a genuine technical post, not advertising. It builds credibility with the community.

Do NOT do at Stage 1: - Launch a press release to science media. There is no story for them yet. - Post broadly about "the network" as if it exists. It does not. - Build extensive social media presence. Without content, it signals abandonment.

Minimum viable presence: - A static webpage explaining the project, the science, and the roadmap. - An email list signup. - A GitHub repository for the pipeline (open source from day one). - A SciStarter listing.

Stage 2: Volunteer Network Live¶

Goal: Produce the first multi-site result. Reach 100+ observers. First press coverage.

What to communicate: - When the first multi-site result is in (first multi-chord occultation or multi-site transient follow-up), that is the press moment. - Target publications for first coverage: Sky & Telescope (news section), Astronomy Magazine, IceInSpace news, Cloudy Nights announcements. - The pitch is specifically: "Observers in [N] countries combined data to produce this result. This is what the network can do that a single telescope cannot." - Simultaneously submit to JAAVSO or a professional journal as a methods + results paper. - For transient follow-up results, pitch to the corresponding science media tier: Ars Technica, Universe Today, then BBC Science Focus, then mainstream press if the result is extraordinary.

The press release format for Stage 2: 1. Lead: "A network of [N] amateur telescopes in [N] countries..." (network framing first) 2. The result: what was observed, why it matters 3. How it works: the participant explains their role in one sentence 4. A quote from a participant: a named amateur astronomer describing the experience 5. A quote from a professional collaborator (if one exists) 6. The social proof image: the world map with stations highlighted

Proactive outreach at Stage 2: - Contact the science editors at Sky & Telescope and Astronomy Magazine directly, not through a press release form. These are small editorial teams who respond to personalized pitches. - Submit an IAU Symposium poster or AAS iPoster for the methods paper. Professional conference presence legitimizes the project for academic collaborators.

Stage 3: Owned Hardware Deployed¶

Goal: Sustained media presence, grant credibility, institutional partnerships.

What to communicate: - "The network now includes both volunteer telescopes and OpenAstro-operated hardware, creating reliable coverage at strategic longitudes." - The key PR story at Stage 3 is the combination paper: a publication where the data includes both professional-grade owned hardware AND amateur-contributed observations, treated equivalently. This is the "47 telescopes across 12 countries" press narrative. - Target for this paper: a letter in MNRAS, AJ, or ApJL. Professional journals signal permanence. - The press story for mainstream outlets: "Scientists turned 47 amateur backyard telescopes into a single global observatory." This framing works for Nature News, BBC Science, The Atlantic science desk, and Ars Technica.

Publications that would cover the Stage 3 story:

Publication	Audience	What Angle Works
Nature News	Broad science	"Citizen science network publishes major result"
Sky & Telescope	Amateur astronomers	"Here is how the network works and how to join"
Ars Technica	Technical general	"The engineering of a distributed telescope network"
BBC Science Focus	UK popular science	"47 backyard telescopes, one discovery"
The Atlantic	Educated general	Profile of a participant + the science
Universe Today	Online astronomy	News article on the result
Physics Today	Physicists	Methods note on heterogeneous photometry

Part 6: The Co-Authorship Incentive Model¶

Why This Needs a Formal Structure¶

The co-authorship incentive is the primary recruitment and retention tool. For it to work, participants need to trust that (a) it will actually happen, (b) the criteria are fair and transparent, and (c) the authorship will appear on something with a DOI that they can cite.

Informal promises of authorship that never materialize are the fastest way to destroy a community. AAVSO has observer codes. ExoClock has formal contribution tracking. OpenAstro needs the same.

Proposed Tier Structure¶

Tier 0 — Acknowledged Contributor - Threshold: Any accepted observation in a campaign that contributed to a published result. - Reward: Named in the acknowledgments section. Full name or preferred attribution. - Effort required: ~1-5 observations. The bar is intentionally low to ensure that anyone who participated gets credited.

Tier 1 — Contributing Scientist - Threshold: 50 hours of accepted observing time, or 100 individual accepted exposures contributing to a campaign, within a 12-month period. - Reward: Listed as co-author on data release papers and network papers. Named in the "Contributor" author group in standard papers (e.g., "OpenAstro Collaboration, including [name list]"). - What the participant receives: An ORCID-compatible authorship they can list on their profile.

Tier 2 — Named Co-Author - Threshold: 200 hours of accepted observing time, or leading a specific campaign sub-effort (e.g., sole observer for a geographic region during a campaign), or contributing a unique capability (specialized filter, specific telescope size class). - Reward: Named individually in the author list, not in a group byline. - What the participant receives: Full ADS-indexed authorship. This is what matters for academic credibility.

Tier 3 — Contributing Author with Methods Section Credit - Threshold: Contribution of software, data reduction methods, calibration analysis, or a significant technical component to a paper. - Reward: Named individually and acknowledged in the relevant methods section ("The zero-point calibration pipeline was developed in collaboration with [name]"). - This tier covers both data contributors and technical contributors.

Tracking and Verification¶

All accepted observations must be logged with timestamps and quality flags. This is an engineering requirement, not just an incentive one.
Each observer has an OpenAstro ID (analogous to AAVSO observer codes). The ID appears in data files, in the instrument registry, and on their profile.
At the time of paper submission, the authorship list is generated from the database: anyone who crosses the threshold for a given campaign or result gets added.
Participants should receive an email when they are added to an author list, before submission, to confirm their preferred name, affiliation, and ORCID.

What Journals Accept Citizen Science Co-Authors¶

Many journals now have well-established policies for large collaborative authorships. The relevant ones for OpenAstro's output:

JAAVSO (Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers) - Routinely publishes papers with 50+ amateur co-authors. This is the lowest-friction target for first publications. - Open access. No page charges for members. - URL: https://www.aavso.org/submit-paper-jaavso

RNAAS (Research Notes of the AAS) - Short communications (800 words). Very fast publication. No peer review beyond editorial check. - Accepts large author lists. ExoClock and similar projects use this for data release notes. - URL: https://journals.aas.org/research-notes/

A&A (Astronomy & Astrophysics) - European journal. Has published major citizen science collaboration papers (e.g., Gaia-ESO Survey with amateur data components). Accepts collaborative author lists. - Page charges exist but waivers are available for projects without institutional funding.

MNRAS (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society) - Accepts large author lists without issue. Many pro-am collaboration papers published here. - The bar is higher than JAAVSO but it's the right target once results are strong enough.

ApJL (Astrophysical Journal Letters) - Letter format, fast turnaround. High impact. Large author lists are standard (every LIGO paper has thousands of authors). - This is the Stage 3 target — a significant result published with the full OpenAstro contributor list.

Formalizing the Policy¶

There must be a written, publicly available co-authorship policy document linked from the project website. This document should state: 1. The tier criteria with specific thresholds 2. How contributions are measured 3. Who decides authorship for any given paper (named person or committee) 4. How disputes are handled 5. What happens to authors who are found to have submitted fraudulent data 6. The embargo and open access policy for data

The document should be versioned and changes should be announced to the community. Changing authorship thresholds retroactively is the fastest way to lose trust.

Appendix: Science Press Contact Points¶

For reference when pitching in Stage 2 and Stage 3:

Nature News: nature.com/news — pitches via press@nature.com; science journalists cover major citizen science results
Sky & Telescope: news@skyandtelescope.org
Astronomy Magazine: astronomy.com/contact
Ars Technica Science: science@arstechnica.com (or pitch via their Twitter/X)
BBC Science Focus: sciencefocus.com/contact — UK pitch for Stage 2+ when European network is live
The Atlantic Science: submissions via their general contact; science desk editors include Marina Koren, Rebecca Rosen
Universe Today: universetoday.com — pitches to Fraser Cain (editor); covers amateur astronomy frequently
IFLScience: iloveScience.com — broader audience, lower threshold, good for early Stage 2 coverage

Appendix: Website / Landing Page Requirements (from `Logistics and Marketing/Landing page and website.md`)¶

The website must serve two purposes simultaneously: (1) communicate the project's value to potential telescope contributors, and (2) provide credibility for university applications and professional outreach.

Minimum content for launch: - What OpenAstro is (1 paragraph, plain language) - What science it does (3–5 science cases with brief explanation of why distribution matters) - How to join (equipment requirements, onboarding link) - Who is behind it (team page) - Recent results or publications (even a preprint or methods paper counts) - Data policy (open access, contributor authorship policy)

For university application use: The site should convey that this is a real, operational project — not just an idea. Dates, data, and evidence of activity matter more than polish.

Appendix: Implementation Roadmap (from `Logistics and Marketing/Ingest.md`)¶

Phase 1: Proof of Concept (Year 1)¶

Pick one science case — stellar occultations are ideal because they have clear success metrics, existing professional infrastructure (prediction services like Lucky Star), and don't require expensive equipment.

Recruit 20–30 sites across three continents. Establish timing protocols. Run coordinated campaigns on a few predicted events. Publish results. This demonstrates capability and builds credibility.

Phase 2: Formalisation (Year 2)¶

Create a legal entity (non-profit or consortium). Draft a memorandum of understanding for participating institutions.

Establish a data archive with proper access policies — open after 6–12 month proprietary period (standard in astronomy).

Appoint a scientific steering committee with terms and rotation.

Apply for seed funding: Heising-Simons Foundation, Kavli Foundation, Simons Foundation — all fund novel observing infrastructure.

Phase 3: Expansion (Years 3–5)¶

Expand science cases. Add transient response capability. Integrate with professional alert streams (TNS, GCN, ANTARES).

Develop a standardised control system adaptable to different telescope mounts and cameras — reduces friction of adding new sites.

Pursue formal partnerships with major surveys — Rubin's alert brokers could feed directly into the response queue.

Tiered participation model: Not everyone contributes equally. A 1-metre class scope with a spectrograph, a 20 cm refractor with a CCD, and a DSLR with a telephoto all have value in different contexts. Route users to appropriate campaigns based on equipment rather than gatekeeping.