Posted by Alan Holmes

“Why do we amateur astronomers put ourselves through the physical and mental hardships of our hobby?”

How often have you asked yourself that question up in the middle of the night when struggling to keep pace with a moving night sky and keep ahead of the weather and the clock?

In the 24 years since Mike Barber and I first sat back and listened to the relays clicking on our ST-1 guider, I have often pondered the reasons behind the appeal of amateur astronomy and CCD imaging in general. Local bookstore sells picture books with beautiful celestial images. Why drag heavy equipment out into the cold darkness and sit through hour-long exposures to make our own?  After asking that question a bunch of times myself, I came to the conclusion that astronomy is a lot like traveling.  One can buy fascinating books with pictures of the Egyptian pyramids, for example, but looking at the book is not the same as going in person.

Pictures are worth 1000 words, but still don't tell the whole story (Image courtesy of 1.BP.blogspot.com)

I once had an opportunity to visit the pyramids during an eclipse trip in 2006.  The first thing you notice when you get to the pyramids is the pervasive smell of camel dung.  Then you encounter the very pushy postcard salesmen, the camel ride vendors, the huge tour buses that try to run you down when you step into the street to get that good picture, the heat, the dust, and the bad case of sunburn coming on.  You become incensed at the carloads of men wolf-whistling at your wife who made the mistake of wearing shorts in 100 degree weather.  You see the sweat running down the face of the tourist police who have to wear their heavy fabric uniforms buttoned at the collar year round because if they don’t, ten other men are lined up waiting to take their job.  You will marvel that for the entire huge Giza pyramid site there is only one toilet for men (upstairs in the solar boat museum). And strangely enough, I enjoyed every minute of it! The point is – the picture itself is not the whole story!  The experience of creating your own personal “image,” with your own story to go with it, is what makes everything special.

This is, I think, the essence of amateur astronomy: The picture in the book does not give you insight into the real brightness of the object, its size, and the subtlety of the detail.  Nor can you appreciate fully the picture in the book without having attempted it yourself, and learned the challenges implicit in producing a very good image.  Not only that, scientific astronomical observations also offer a unique perspective only available to the serious traveler.

The first time I captured the spectrum of M82, I noticed the H-alpha lines near the center were noticeably shifted, relative to each other, evidence of the titanic velocities near the exploding core. I detected the rotation of Saturn’s rings, and the red shift of a distant galaxy.

You read about this stuff, but actually seeing it in your own data “brings it home”, to use some American slang – it makes it real.  This is what I love about amateur astronomy – it is like traveling to gain that individual insight and perspective that those who don’t travel never get, but you can do it all from your backyard, at least for half the sky.  And here’s more good news: It probably costs less than a trip to Egypt!