Amateur Hackers of Astronomy

eaglemoon writes "I have often wondered if Hackers and the Hacker culture is unique to software or can it be extended to other domains? This article in the NY Review of Books examines how amateurs are performing as well as professionals in the field of astronomy. The clash between the Baconian view of science and the Cartesian perspective is very interesting to reflect on and should be compared with community based software development and the traditional cathedrals built by firms." And it's from Freeman Dyson, always worth reading.

Comments

Found this site...

[Yarn]

when I was looking into fitting a webcam to a microscope I own (proper CCD cameras being expensive and requiring an additional frame grabber):

http://www.astrabio.demon.co.uk/QCUIAG/

Re:hackers are everywhere; reality hacking

[texchanchan]

Oh, absolutely. You can hack anything if the phrase means to study a system or tool and develop its less-known capabilities. I guess even socialites are hackers of human interaction (for good or ill, depending on their personal qualities). I think of hacking as poking around in the substrate of whatever it is and learning what's there, finding shortcuts and odd combinations of features that produce amazing results. You use whatever tools you've got: telescopes for the moon, microscopes for microbes, general observation for reality. (Any hacker can surprise you when they say "Watch this" but those reality hackers can really surprise you.)