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WEIKER^ /WIYNAND^ NOAO^ /AURA/^ NSFFOCAL POINT by Michael A. Covington
Step 1 is to budget your time and
effort. Few amateur astronomers can
afford to become full-time, unpaid
professionals like Percival Lowell. Good
equipment doesn’t obligate you to spend
all your time observing. Adopt specifi c
projects so you don’t feel compelled to
observe everything.
Step 2 is to connect with people
and sources of information. Contact a
nearby university’s astronomy depart-
ment and let them know you have
advanced equipment and skills. Join an
organization that coordinates amateur
scientifi c work such as the AAVSO
(aavso.org), ALPO (alpo-astronomy.
org), or BAA (britastro.org). Learn to
use professional tools, such as NASA’s
huge, searchable astronomy library at
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu, and SIMBAD,
an online encyclopedia of deep-sky
objects at simbad.u-strasbg.fr.
Step 3 is to plan projects. One
option is to map and explore. Little-
known deep-sky objects are within your
reach. Faint emission nebulae and dark
nebulae are obvious targets. Amateur
Giuseppe Donatiello recently discovered
a dwarf galaxy as a smudge on his pic-
ture of a fi eld in Andromeda (S&T: Mar.
2019, p. 9). Consider also galactic cirrusNo More
Worlds to
Conquer?
It’s time for advanced amateurs
to think more like professionals.RECENTLY I HEARD FROM A disheart-
ened astrophotographer. After master-
ing deep-sky imaging with amateur
equipment, he came into some money
and bought a professional-grade setup,
with a large Schmidt camera and a top-
quality mount. He was taking beauti-
ful images of nebulae and galaxies but
found himself exhausted, bored, and
frustrated.
Part of his problem was the time
commitment. No longer limited by his
equipment, he was spending 40 hours
accumulating sub-exposures for each
image, then many hours processing
them. And although his pictures were
gorgeous, they were just like the best
pictures taken by others. What, he won-
dered, was the purpose?
The answer, I said, was to change
direction and think more like a profes-
sional astronomer.
In the 20th century, amateurs and
professionals pulled apart. Professionals
had special photographic plates, auto-
guiders, photometers, and (later) CCD
cameras, while amateurs made do with
fi lm SLRs. It was impressive when ama-
teur pictures showed anything at all.
Once bigger telescopes became afford-
able in the 1980s, many of us took the
“aesthetic path” and just enjoyed the
wonders of the sky with our eyes and
cameras, no longer trying to contribute
anything to scientifi c inquiry.
It’s time to turn back to science.
Sure, we can all take amazing pictures.
But for the fi rst time since the Victo-
rian era we also have access to celestial
objects not well known to science and
opportunities to make real discoveries.(S&T: Apr. 2019, p. 57), also known as
integrated fl ux nebulae, which amateurs
regularly photograph but no one has yet
adequately mapped.
Another is to patrol for changes.
Image the same area repeatedly and
look for novae, variable stars, aster-
oids, and other transient objects. Some
variable nebulae await discovery, and
distant galaxies often host supernovae.
A third option is to advance the
technology. Although our equipment
works well, we can still invent opti-
cal and electronic tools and especially
software. Things as basic as autoguid-
ing algorithms remain on the frontier
of development. Software needs to be
bundled and integrated, too (see, for
example, astronomylinux.ap-i.net, an
amateur project).
The fruit of your efforts could
enhance many people’s enjoyment of
the sky. And who knows? Along the way
you might just light upon something no
one else has ever seen.¢MICHAEL COVINGTONis author of
Digital SLR Astrophotography and other
books. By day he develops natural
language processing software in Athens,
Georgia.84 SEPTEMBER 2019 • SKY & TELESCOPE
Amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich dis-
covered the Soap Bubble Nebula in 2008.