Slashdot Mirror

I'm not at all. I've seen some crazy people do some stuff with strange equipment in the local astronomy club. I quizzed an older gentleman at the last Astro-fest who appeared to be taking photos of what I thought was nothing, no nebula, no galaxy, turns out he was recording the magnitude changes of variable stars for an open amateur database that effectively crowd sources science efforts.

He did this photometry with a Canon 1000D. A lot of effort was put into characterising his sensor and detecting the optimal signal to noise ratio for exposures and at least one paper says that using standard DSLRs you can detect a 0.02mag shift in start brightness once everything is properly set up.

Detecting planets using the method described would not be difficult from an equipment point of view, we take photos already of things far fainter (see the little blur in his picture? That's the dumbbell nebula. Here is my picture of it taken with the same sensor as the Nikon D200 (except strapped to a peltier) my point being that his picture and data looks like blurry garbage compared to what some people are doing with their equipment so if he can see the data then I would believe it to be possible.

As an aside back at our laser lab at uni we used cheap webcams to analyse laser modes. It was 1/100th of the price of a photometer array but it worked because all that is important is repeatable measurements. Everything else including externalities like temperature of the sensor, atmospheric disturbance etc can be characterised.

To add to the Galaxy Zoo suggestion:
Have a look at this book: "Statistics, data mining and machine learning in astronomy" http://www.britastro.org/journ...
I have my BS in Physics, but I write software. I think it would be pretty hard at 10 hours a week to pick up the math of most of the advanced topics - even mechanics. But, learning statistics and data mining and having public access to data like the Sloan Survey would put you in the position to make real discoveries as an amateur. And, a modicum of competence in statistics and data mining may give you some good options for paying gigs.

"Always consider the possibility that installing a light may aid criminal activity."

http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/crime.html#noreduction

Bad guys who wave flashlights are easier to spot than bad guys who don't need extra lighting.

Maybe not: http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/crime.html

Just the first couple of hits on Google:

http://www.suite101.com/content/more-evidence-of-light-pollution-harm-to-animals-a89082
http://www.urbanwildlands.org/abstracts.html
http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/wildlife.html
http://calgary.rasc.ca/lp/animals.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution

I have several that disagree, and several that are contradictory.

Also, why are you assuming that "does not deter" automagically helps the crook "see what he is doing"? I didn't see a single study that supported that idea, and many that rebutted it.

http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/crime.html

A quick Google search shows that there seem to be studies about lighting and crime. Sure the topic probably merits additional study, but discounting the work that has been done based on an unsourced sentence leading a wikipedia article probably isn't helping further the discussion.

Before replying I did use Google. I found the Wiki article by Googling lights night security studies, it's number 4 in the results. The first result is a blog entry about how the streetlight outside the window disturbs sleep. The next two are sellers of lights. The fifth, "The Issues surrounding lighting" has a section, "How lighting can aid crime", explaining exactly how lights help crime. It's interesting the first one says most crimes happen in daylight. Streetlights definitely don't help there.

It looks like you're not the only one sick of brightly-lit nights. There is an article in the Independent here on moves to change the situation. And the Campaign for Dark Skies covers any developments on their, quite frankly, rather ugly website.

So there is hope.

>I dunno, "astronomy hack" seems more like plumbing
>your yard for liquid nitrogen using existing
>sprinkler system pipe, or turning a Mattel Barbie
>Photo Designer into a functioning spectrograph.

Very funny!

And, it also leads to an idea: a test equipment or laboratory hacks collection. We've all heard about or witnessed the occasional ingenuous non-standard lab trick. Collecting a bunch of anecdotal stories of real lab hacks could make for an entertaining read. It's no stupider than a lot of other collections out there.

Would I buy it in the form of a book? No. Probably not. But if it were an online collection it might be worth a few chuckles. While we're at it, why not a full franchise: cryogenic hacks, optics hacks, frequency domain hacks, etc. }8^)

On a more serious note, I agree that this book title seems misleading. Even someone who knows nothing about optical astronomy like me has run across a few *real* hacks, like the webcam astronomy folks (http://www.usno.navy.mil/pao/QuickCamAstro.shtml and others), or the many mirror-grinders out there turning plate glass into instruments. A few minutes with google turned up dozens of other examples (http://www.britastro.org/iandi/articles.htm, http://www.atmsite.org/date.html, etc.) A

real astro hack book could be interesting. Shame this isn't one.

One of the benefits of using computers nowadays is that amateurs can trawl through data and look for things that professionals don't have time to do. Okay, looking for very short-lived comets may not be the most thrilling part of it, but its a welcome adjunct to the increasing co-operation between amateur and professional astronomers.

An example of this is the British Supernova Hunt, where amateur astronomers (albeit with high-quality equipment) scan the skies for novae, image them and report back the findings, all of which lead to a better understanding of the universe. Professional telescope time is scarce and very expensive, so amateurs can do this time-consuming and laborious work, freeing up the professionals for more exacting science.

There are very few fields where amateurs can feel they contribute something to our understanding - Astronomy is one area where this is possible.