My pal Darlene Cavalier from Science Cheerleader twigged me on to a project she's helped develop: Science for Citizens, a collection of websites for projects where citizens -- that's you! -- can help do science. There are a lot of interesting projects there, from using Hubble to bird watching. There are a lot of familiar ones there -- Stardust@Home, for example -- as well as educational projects for kids and older students. It's a treasure trove of ideas! I'm a big fan of citizen science, in fact. Amateur astronomy has and probably always will be an important aspect of astronomy, since there is a vast amount of excellent science that can be done with smaller, personal observatories. Lots of other fields of science are figuring this out as well, so you should take a look and see if anything there captures your interest. There's something there for pretty much everyone.
