
Backyard telescopes and amateur eyes see where “pro” astronomers can’t - okket
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/amateur-astronomy/
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antognini
Astronomy has a long and proud history of contributions from amateurs.
Amateurs are probably best known (at least to me) for discovering supernovae.
I mentioned in another comment to this article that a friend of mine from grad
school worked on a project called ASAS-SN, which uses a network of small,
cheap telescopes to monitor the entire night sky every few days. Their stated
goal was to use this network to discover supernovas (hence the SN in the
name), but, of course, they have discovered a bunch of other interesting
things as well. It was only a year or two ago that they discovered more
supernovae than amateur astronomers. Prior to that, amateurs consistently
discovered far more supernovae than professional astronomers. Interestingly,
the most prolific discoverers were in Japan, because they could discover all
the supernovae that went off over the Pacific Ocean that had already set for
observers on the West Coast of the US.

Another field that involves lots of work from amateurs is microlensing. In a
microlensing event, one star passes in front of another, and its gravity
lenses the light from the star behind it. This produces a characteristic
increase and decrease in the brightness of the background star over the course
of a day or so. If the lensing star (the star in the middle) has a planet,
this will distort the brightness curve. These sorts of observations are
extremely time-sensitive, and its critical that data is collected during
certain, very narrow bands of time. Weather or other observing priorities
sometimes prevent professional astronomers from observing these events, so
it's not uncommon that data in some of the crucial times are provided by
amateurs.

And there are lots of other areas that amateurs have contributed enormously
to! Asteroid discovery, monitoring variable stars
([https://www.aavso.org/](https://www.aavso.org/)), and even exoplanet
discovery! In many ways the term "amateur" does a disservice to amateur
astronomers because their setups can be quite sophisticated --- the only thing
"amateur" about them is that they don't get paid for all the great work they
do!

~~~
luxpir
Quick note on the word 'amateur', I understand that it originally connoted
someone who 'loves' something. It would be nice to get back to that meaning in
the public understanding of the word, particularly now global groups of
amateurs are empowered by the internet.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Since the current usage means people who do something without being paid,
emphasizing the "love" would shift meanings quite a bit. For example, I have
to assume that many professional (paid, that is) astronomers also love what
they do...

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kevin_thibedeau
> But with limited telescope time available, their views of the planets only
> come in snatches.

It seems silly that university astronomy departments don't invest in small
arrays of these telescopes with automated tracking software deciding where to
point each night. With a modest number of sites you could have global coverage
of all nearby objects of interest regardless of foul weather in some spots.

But you know, they need more money to expand administration instead.

~~~
WD-42
That is basically what we have built at Las Cumbres Observatory Global
Telescope Network (lcogt.net). We have ~20 telescopes around the globe, all on
a single network that essentially distributes a queue of observations to where
and when they are most likely to be observed. The result is 24/7 coverage of
the both the northern and southern hemispheres.

It's a lot harder than you'd think. There is no such thing as an off the shelf
professional grade telescope, so we employ a large engineering team to
actually build them. Scopes and their instruments are complex and made of many
independent systems and require a TON of software to run without an human
operator (and even with). Scheduling observations is another challenge, an np-
complete one actually. Then there's the problem of analyzing and storing
gigabytes of data a day.

As a member of the relatively small software team, we have a TON to do. But
it's a really cool problem to work on!

~~~
imrehg
Hey, that looks amazing! I was wondering about the software/hardware
controlling the telescopes themselves, but cannot find any information on it
on the website, is there any link, or that's more "behind the scenes"/non-
public info?

~~~
WD-42
The software controlling the telescopes is a collection of java agents using
JADE: [http://jade.tilab.com/](http://jade.tilab.com/)

There are many agents with different responsibilities,from driving the cameras
themselves, to the mount, dome, autoguiders, etc. We use a pubsub based model
to keep them all in the know.

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jcurbo
This extends to more than just planets, too. The University of Maryland
Observatory runs a summer program for amateur astronomers that I signed up for
this year, and we're learning how to do exoplanet transit detection. There are
databases to look up candidates and ways to submit data to reinforce findings.
It's doable with typical telescopes available to amateurs, and the observatory
has a few larger scopes we're learning to use. One of the professors at UMD
has written up guides on how to do it:
[http://www.astrodennis.com/](http://www.astrodennis.com/)

Other efforts like this include: \- American Association of Variable Star
Observers [https://www.aavso.org/public](https://www.aavso.org/public) \-
Center for Backyard Astrophysics [http://cbastro.org/](http://cbastro.org/)

and I'm sure there are others I don't know about.

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boxcardavin
In undergrad astro my long-term project was searching for eclipsing binary
stars, which are paired stars that are aligned with us just right so that they
eclipse each other as they orbit. We looked one by one at known variable stars
that are easily found by taking a series of wide angle shots of the sky and
watching for periodic variations in brightness. The reason we had to look at
one star at a time was because we wanted to characterize the light spectrum as
being either shifting (pulsing single star) or mostly constant.

It always blew me away that the reason we had a project like that to do was
because not every star had been looked at.

This was before Kepler data came out and it will not really apply once LSST
starts kicking ass.

~~~
verytrivial
"The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

The LSST is a new kind of telescope. Currently under construction in Chile,
the LSST is designed to conduct a ten-year survey of the dynamic universe.
LSST can map the entire visible sky in just a few nights; each panoramic
snapshot with the 3200-megapixel camera covers an area 40 times the size of
the full moon." \- [https://www.lsst.org/](https://www.lsst.org/)

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Blorqx
Russell Williams Porter, one of the founders of "amature" telescope making and
lead the movement to make telescopes affordable to the average person. He is
an unsung hero of modern astronomy and general badass. For more info on him:
[http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/a-root-of-
amat...](http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/a-root-of-amateur-
astronomy-unearthed/)

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jgalt212
_Seeing in the Dark_ is a great book on citizen science in astronomy.

[https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Dark-Astronomers-
Discovering-U...](https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Dark-Astronomers-Discovering-
Universe/dp/0684865807)

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jonathansizz
This is an interesting trend, which is also happening in other fields such as
genomics. Many sciences started off as amateur pursuits before they became
professionalized. Technological advances are allowing some of these fields to
move back in favour of the amateur. This opens up some nice possibilities for
the serious hobbyist; it's surely more satisfying to conduct some original
research than to waste time on the web or playing video games.

Personally, astronomy has always been an escape from the electronic world for
me, so I've never been drawn to the imaging side with its CCD cameras and
computer equipment. But I do know a couple of people who really love it, and
they certainly find it rewarding. I'm happy to stick with my binoculars and
12" Dobsonian, but for someone with a bit of spare cash who wants the chance
to make a contribution to science, the opportunities are there.

