Right now, all across Australia there are thousands of science projects relying on regular people for their research.
They're known as 'citizen scientists' and they spend their nights and weekends doing science - for the love not money.
One is former strongman Michael Sidonio, an amateur astronomer based in Canberra who discovered a galaxy.
"I think the role of amateur astronomers in the world of professional research is growing because of the age of digital technology," he says.
"So the fact that there are an enormous amount of amateur telescopes out right across the world, why not utilise them?"
Sidonio was part of a team that discovered a galaxy, a fact he says he's "pretty happy about".
"I was intending to photograph, very nearby but a very large, very famous, very bright beautiful coloured galaxy called NGC253. It ended up being a very nice photograph.
"And there was this little smudge on the outer edge of the full frame and at the time I didn't really think too much about it.
"So quite a lot of them were distant galaxies and there was this smudge near the edge of the frame that I noticed but it wasn't until a professional team.
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"They saw my image on my website and they contacted me and said can we have your original raw data and they were going to use that as part of their study.
"They were looking at this particular smudge to determine in fact what it was and confirm their suspicions that it was a dwarf galaxy around that larger galaxy."
Georgia Poyner is a 15-year-old schoolgirl who has become the most prolific contributor to a national marine science cataloguing project.
"I'm basically obsessed with the ocean and contribute to citizen science and tropical fish survey work," she says.
"I like the fact that at the moment I don't actually really have any actual qualifications - I haven't been to uni, I haven't done any courses - but I still get to help out and I'm pretty well respected and they consider me valuable to them I guess.
"I saw a species of jelly fish and I don't really know a lot about jellyfish but I thought 'oh, that looks really weird'.
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"I scooped it up and put it in a bucket to show to one of the guys that was an expert and he also had no idea what it was.
"He actually ended up taking it back to Merimbula Aquarium and it turned out to be a cephea cephea or the cauliflower jelly fish.
"It was the second time it had ever been discovered in Australia and the first time was 100 years ago in Queensland so I was pretty excited.
"The specimen actually ended up going to the Australian Museum and they've now got it in a jar."
Paul Flemons is the citizen science manager at the Australian Museum and was instrumental in getting everyday people involved in their extensive research, collections and cataloguing.
"Citizen science has actually been around for a long time, maybe for 400 years or more, starting with Darwin ... where they had people collecting animals and sending them back to them to look at them and study them," he says.
"So in many ways citizen science is hundreds of years old but the term 'citizen science' is only 10 to 20 years old.
"And it refers to basically nonprofessionals being engaged in the professional study of science and helping scientists both collect data, analyse data."
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