What’s the cheapest scientific instrument that can get an average amateur to the bleeding edge of discovery work? So not just scutwork that the pros with billion dollars instruments like CERN or Hubble indulgently farm out.
Anyone can apply for telescope time! Beyond that, so much data is publicly available. The cost is in training, what’s an interesting problem and how to ask good questions of the data. The cost of entry to robust data access is a computer.
Also, to mention for your twitterers, there is an even easier way (though without "ownership"): citizen science projects have been developed by teams for things where the human eye is better/easier than a computer. In most cases, the user looks and classifies an image
Yeah I’ve seen these things… the galaxy classification thing etc. Astronomy certainly seems to have an unusual diversity of models suitable for many skill levels. Though on the low end, it’s really turking work. But I’m sure it’ll get better as ML tools get added in.
One thing I’d like to see is work-study gamified software. Hours of tagging images won’t really teach you anything or prep you for more advanced work, but astronomy stuff along the lines of kerbal space program for space mission design would be exciting.