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Are Amateurs leaving astronomy hobby?

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#851 Kidastronomer

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Posted 13 June 2015 - 05:28 AM

"If it was all about the view I would just spend time looking at HST photos and the like and never exposing myself to mosquitos or the occasional inquisative wet dog nose in the dark."

I'm glad I started the hobby in the pre-digital age. The focus (pun intended) was on equipment, charts, and techniques for visual observing. Had to learn celestial mechanics and setting circles, and translating the dots on the chart to the star fields in the eyepiece, which gave me an appreciation for the vastness of space. Does go-to or interactive apps give the same experience? I hope so.

Some interactive apps (like SkySafari, which has a compass mode) are very good, good enough to be accurate star charts. GoTo is also useful when you want to see something in the city, but if an object is in a very desolate part of the sky, starhopping works much better.

#852 thehand

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Posted 13 June 2015 - 08:24 AM

I use Skyview and on my phone it's ok but not very precise, but it could just be my phone.  Itt helps get me in the right general area but then the rest is up to me.  Not much better than a star atlas but except for how information is displayed.  What makes the phone app nice s the ability to display and search by category. What makes it frustrating is how little information is displayed at a given time.  There is a learning curve and you still have to get to know the sky if you want to see anything.

 

I think that gets to the heart of the technology and automation issue.  These things like Goto and GPS systems are aids, you still need to take the time to learn the night's sky and learn how to think in a rotational frame of reference.  That said I think we can all agree that the technology allows amatures to do things well funded scientists of 40yrs ago only dreamed of just like digital computing transformed analog computing (btw analog never went away but it's signifigance chaned in very different yet important ways).



#853 Sloan

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Posted 13 June 2015 - 12:57 PM

So as luck would have it, yesterday I was at a graduation reception and talked a bit to Caltech's president, physicist Dr. Rosenbaum.   My daughter mentioned I was an amateur astronomer, and built my own scopes.   He asked if I used the computerized "goto" mounts.   I said "no, it isn't as much fun."    He responded that he had a star phone ap that he likes.    I agreed that they were "great!".

 

It got me thinking that perhaps we need to adapt to the more modern experience of astronomy - though it may be regrettable to those of us that love telescopes and raw photons on our retina.   But astronomy is about the universe, not the equipment we use to enjoy it.    Lets include our phone ap brothers and sisters into the hobby - our ranks will swell.

 

- Gil

I star hopped for 30 years, but I love goto and tracking. I can see many more objects with ease. Find new comets quickly without fuss. With SkyFi and SkySafari on my iPad, I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I find it is very fun to use SkySafari for exploring the sky and when finding something of interest I press goto to investigate it with my telescope. I don't use SkyFi during public observing, the hand controller on the Celestron SE8 works just fine especially for centering objects in the eyepiece. I do use SkySafari to show people the names of Jupiter moons in their present positions as well as Saturn's moons.


Edited by Sloan, 13 June 2015 - 12:59 PM.


#854 GilATM

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Posted 13 June 2015 - 05:39 PM

I think it is great that there are so many facets of the hobby - and goto has been a great advance!  So is the incredible advances in digital photography and automatic tracking.   There are so many ways to enjoy the hobby - we are very lucky indeed!

 

Gil




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