[bkloppenborg]

As you mentioned, astronomy is a field where contributions by amateurs / citizen scientists are extremely valuable. A few organizations that exemplify this are: (1) the American Association of Variable Star Astronomers (disclaimer, I'm their Executive Director) which collects photometric (brightness) data as well as spectroscopic data on variable stars and kindred objects including exoplanets (2) the Society for Astronomical Sciences which is more broad than AAVSO, but with a moderate focus on instrumentation (3) the Center for Backyard Astrophsyics (hyper specialized on one type of variable star, a good collaborator of the AAVSO) (4) the International Occultation and Timing Association that observe asteroids occulting (blocking) stars to infer their shapes

Most countries have organizations similar to these too.

Edit: There is a group within the SAS working on an automated optical spectrograph for astronomy called the FlexSpec 1 (https://flexspec1.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). It is about $500 in parts. Similar devices sell for about $3,000.

[pavel_lishin]

How plausible would it be to contribute if you live in fairly bright suburbs?

[bkloppenborg]

Suburbs aren't as bad as you might imagine. I observe from my patio under Bortle 6 skies (you can looks yours up at https://flexspec1.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) with a 5" telescope. We use to have a robotic telescope located in Cambridge, MA and it produced useful science.