The thrill of discovery and being the first person to see a new object. Collaborating with other scientists. Discovery by accident. Another activity using Stardial is finding and plotting the light curve of variable stars. The American Association of Variable Star Observers has a nice program called Hands-On Astrophysics .
Students can think of additional activities and the Stardial site has more projects.
Stardial has been, by far, the best resource I have ever used for motivating my astronomy students. These are all real possibilities and my students become very interested and excited about them. With the real-time images of Stardial as the carrot, my students are learning all about astronomy and computers, image processing, and the Internet.