Word: amateurness
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...evidence of the trend is more than anecdotal. Membership in the nation's largest amateur group, the Astronomical League, has more than doubled since 1990. State and local astronomy clubs can be found almost anywhere with little more than a Google search. New York City, one of the most light-polluted places on Earth, boasts a 350-member stargazing group...
...market for telescopes and peripherals has exploded too, and with affordable star-tracking software, digital cameras and access to global-positioning systems (GPS), self-taught stargazers can discover comets and supernovas on their own, thus democratizing this once elite science. Amateurs helped track the trajectory of the doomed shuttle Columbia. Indeed, the very distinction between amateur and professional astronomy may be vanishing. "There are professionals who can't even tell you the exact location of a galaxy they have been studying," says Berman. "And then there are so-called amateurs for whom the sky is a second home...
Super-imaging is valuable for more than recreational work. There's not an amateur out there who hasn't looked in the mirror and seen Clyde Tombaugh, the self-taught stargazer who discovered Pluto in 1930, or David Levy, the celebrated amateur who has discovered or co-discovered 21 comets, including the famous Shoemaker-Levy, which crashed into Jupiter in 1994. While there are only so many planets or visible comets out there, amateurs are making contributions tracking star movements and lunar cycles and even hunting for supernovas. Larry Mitchell, the Houstonian with the 36-in. telescope, spotted...
Most recently--and most tragically--amateurs pitched in to help NASA reconstruct the debris trail of the shuttle Columbia. More than 3,000 eyewitnesses--half of them amateur astronomers, many of whom had GPS markers that pinpointed their location--phoned in reports. "These people are our heroes," says Paul Hill, a NASA flight director whose job it was to sift through all the witness reports. "There are 15 to 20 of them who were key to our being able to do our analysis...
This year the stargazers will have more than ever to shoot. Lunar eclipses will occur on May 16 and Nov. 9. And in August, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth in at least 50,000 years. Amateur astronomers, already drunk on the sky, are likely to get giddier still. "There's a mind-stretching aspect to it," says Berman. "You look through a telescope and don't have to say a thing." The sky, as always, is perfectly capable of speaking for itself. --With reporting by Esther Chapman/Omaha, Dan Cray/Los Angeles, Nancy Harbert/Fort Davis, Broward Liston/Cape Canaveral...