As Rubin prepares to release millions of alerts per night, many in the amateur and citizen science community are excited by the potential to contribute follow-up observations — through imaging, photometry, or even spectroscopy. But I’m wondering what infrastructure currently exists, or is envisioned, to enable meaningful and usable public contributions.
In particular:
Is there an open platform where anyone can upload FITS files under a permissive license, with enough metadata to make them easily searchable by sky position, time, wavelength etc?
I may be missing something, but it seems that most professional archives don’t allow public uploads, while amateur-focused platforms like AstroBin — which is quite good in many respects — are oriented more toward astrophotography than scientific follow-up. AstroBin also requires a paid subscription after 10 uploads and charges extra for plate solving, which could discourage participation from people in parts of the world with limited resources but dark skies and underrepresented time zones.
A few open questions:
- Are there existing tools or services that support public contributions of observational data in a way that aligns with professional science needs?
- How do we best handle data licensing to make amateur contributions usable by professional astronomers? There are a number of open data licenses better suited to data than traditional text-focused licenses like Creative Commons. The Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) or CDLA-Permissive might strike a good balance — allowing reuse while preserving attribution and compatibility with professional tools. Is there any guidance from Rubin on preferred data licensing for community-uploaded observations?
- What about data provenance and quality? What do academics want in this realm? Is there any effort to allow optional digital signatures or verified metadata for FITS files?
- Could a new VO-compliant, community-run platform bridge the gap — or could something like Aladin, MAST, or ESASky evolve in this direction?
I’d love to hear if others have already tackled this problem, or if there are plans within the Rubin ecosystem — e.g., alert brokers, community science initiatives — to support this kind of contribution. What would professionals need in terms of metadata, calibration, or reputation signals to feel confident using public submissions?
Looking forward to ideas, corrections, or suggestions on how best to move this forward.