| Astrophysics (Index) | About |
Amateur astronomy, astronomical viewing as a hobby, is widespread and supports a major business segment to provide appropriate amateur telescopes as well as references, software, services, etc. Back-yard astronomy generally refers to the activities of someone with the means to observe who does so occasionally or regularly, but there are amateur astronomers who carry it much further than that. The equipment varies from none, to binoculars, to small, generally portable telescopes, to major set-ups by individuals (e.g., the radio telescope of Grote Reber) or clubs, some of which maintain and operate observatories.
Historical amateur astronomy included leading-edge research: for much of history, no one was paying astronomers, and the development of professional astronomy was gradual. Perhaps related to this was private funding of astronomy: someone wealthy enough to have the time or resources might fund such observation and/or might engage in it themselves (and there are still private citizens with the resources and inclination to fund astronomical research). Even after positions in universities and museums for astronomical research became common, amateurs, perhaps especially those who traveled to the southern hemisphere, made significant contributions. The sheer number of amateur observers and observations as well as their not-always-conventional choice of targets and regions of the sky also yielded significant discoveries, and this remains true to this day.
Modern amateur astronomy offers new means to provide significant results, i.e., quicker communication and coordination through the Internet (though communication through publications, letters, and lectures has been around for centuries). Some of the areas in which amateur astronomy now provides otherwise-unavailable data includes variable star data, data on positions of artificial satellites (if not precisely astronomy, somewhat related), and discovery of solar system bodies. Like small college observatories, amateur observatories can dedicate resources to observing changes (e.g., to circumstellar disks) that cannot all be tracked by professional observatories that are time-limited resources. One accomplishment of interested amateurs has been the coordinated tracking of occultations (from many Earth locations) of solar system bodies along with the combining the data to reveal their sizes and shapes.