Where are the amateur theoretical astrophysicists?

Amateur astronomy has been transformed over the last few decades with the advent of sensitive imaging detectors that are accessible to amateur astronomers of regular financial means. More so, when they put their efforts together, observatories come to being that rival many professional ones. So we often see deep photographs of the sky that are truly amazing in beauty and detail. Of course, even discoveries are made not only of comets and asteroids, but even new nebulae or supernovae are sometimes found visually or with CCD technology.

But where are the amateur theoretical astrophysicists? A key ingredient of the study of the universe is based on the theoretical interpretation of observations or basic theoretical speculation. After all, the final understanding comes from the theoretical ideas that we have about the world around us.

Observational amateur astronomers are contributing to many professional projects. Event the citizen scientist projects, such as Galaxy Zoo and its children have been very successful and well publicized. But the amateur theoreticians remain widely hidden. Of course, the same imbalance is true in professional astronomy and astrophysics, the observers are a lot more in the limelight than the theorists.

If you are an amateur astrophysicist and would like to be engaged in a professional project here is a project where you can contribute: 3D astrophysics, specifically the 3D reconstruction of astrophysical objects for research.  There is so much work to be done, that the few professional astrophysicists that are currently engaged with this kind of work, can hardly cope with the demand. So, this is a call for help!

With our virtual interactive astrophysical laboratory SHAPE, it is now possible to reproduce in detail observations of rather complex structures, but the number of expert users of the software is rather small. Inspired in the common 3D modeling software used for special effects in movie making, it is highly interactive and does not require user programming.

This kind of work is actually not the classical highly mathematical theoretical work that fills pages and pages with algebraic transformations. Rather, it is very close to the observational side of astronomy, by reproducing observations with theoretical ideas that can be build in SHAPE.

How can you make a useful contribution to the SHAPE project and astrophysics in general? There are three main lines along which contributions can be made. First, build 3D models based on actual observations that will be part of professional publications. Second, build standard validation projects to test the software capabilities and compare them with more analytical models that can be computed with other means. Third, write documentation, produce video tutorial and set up template projects that will help others, fellow amateurs and professional astrophysicists alike, to learn how to effectively use SHAPE.

If you are interested, please give us a shout.

Wolfgang and Nico