By contrast, the sharing of data among European astronomers who took part in the tracking of the 1680 comet looks surprisingly modern.

BBC: A Point of View: Crowd-sourcing comets

The scientific community-wide collaborative observations of the 1680 comet, including Flamsteed's purloined data, were subsequently printed as important evidence in Newton's Principia in 1687.

BBC: A Point of View: Crowd-sourcing comets

Elegantly echoing the activities of these early, ground-breaking astronomers, what we now refer to as "crowd-sourcing" has recently been shown to be able to determine the trajectory of a comet as spectacular as the one observed in 1680.

BBC: A Point of View: Crowd-sourcing comets