[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

I recorded an interesting documentary this last Thursday, and I'm just now getting a chance to watch it. (Gotta love these digital video recorders...)

It's entitled "Seeing in the Dark," and it discusses the current state of amateur astronomy, with some nice information about its history. The biggest, most interesting thing is how many amateurs are now pulling their data from remote sources; there are tons of "time-share" 'scopes out there, which are financed by hundreds or thousands of eager amateur users, that collect photons onto digital camera systems and deliver their images to the amateur investigators via the internet.

It ran on PBS. I would hope it gets re-run at some point.

-the other Doug

[Stu]

Emily reviewed this show on her always-excellent blog t'other day, and having been an "amateur astronomer" myself since I was knee-high to a Jawa I'm really looking forward to watching it.

However, one comment in Emily's blog posting made me go "Hmmmm...."

The show makes the point that although astronomy is not a cheap hobby, it is certainly within the reach of many thousands of enthusiasts

As I told Emily, I hope the show doesn't actually make that point, because that could frighten a lot of potential skywatchers away from the hobby that I love.

The thing is, astronomy is a "cheap hobby", or at least it can be. Astronomy is only as expensive a hobby as you wish to make it. It can be almost free, in fact. I know this because I have been an amateur astronomer for some 30 (OMG! 30!!!! ) years now, and I run a large and very active astronomical society here in Cumbria, and although we have a lot of members with telescopes, even the odd observatory here and there, many of my members own little more than a pair of binoculars bought from a 2nd hand store, and a star atlas, and they are very much amateur astronomers too. In fact, I know at least half a dozen of my members don't even use binocs; they're happy to just wrap up warm on a clear night, go outside and simply look up at the stars, or watch an eclipse, or count shooting stars, etc. They're "doing amateur astronomy" too.

When I do my astronomy and space Outreach talks in schools and to community groups here in the UK I am always very, very careful to stress that anyone listening to me can "get into astronomy" just by looking up now and again. Even during the daytime, walking to or from work, or out shopping, they can see the Sun and think about it being a star, and *that's* doing astronomy. Marvelling at a Moon halo or a Sun halo, or a sundog, that's doing astronomy too. It doesn't have to mean investing a gazillion pounds or dollars in a robotic telescope and a dome, or logging on to remote telescopes, or spending hours Registaxing images of Jupiter's cloud belts or Saturn's rings.

So, I'll look forward to seeing the show, but if it really does make astronomy seem like a rich man (or woman's) hobby then that would be a great shame, and very wrong. The poor kid standing in the litter-strewn yard of his apartment block, trying to see the Milky Way through the haze of light pollution above his city, is every bit as much an astronomer as the guy who looks at the sky with his 24" reflector from his custom-built dome, in the garden of his sprawling house in a dark corner of some light pollution free community.

If you look up at the sky and smile with a sense of wonder as starlight bathes your face, you're an astronomer.

[laurele]

If you look up at the sky and smile with a sense of wonder as starlight bathes your face, you're an astronomer.
[/quote]

Well, that makes my mother an amateur astronomer! I've tried to get her interested in this for years without much success. However, over the past few months, she's watched shows like "The Universe" on the History Channel and heard me teach my four-year-old nephew about the solar system. I mentioned that Venus would be visible this week at about 5 AM, and she actually woke up to see it! I can't get over the fact that she did this, but then again, I'm not a morning person and am more likely to view anything up to around 2 AM than an hour before sunrise.