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First thread, Meandering Observing Story
A thread about observing the night sky with or without a telescope. 'Observing' for those of us (JA Grier @grierja) of the astro bent, is both cherished and oft-cursed. As in we curse a lot, not that it's cursed/hexed. Well maybe it is ...
A thread about observing the night sky with or without a telescope. 'Observing' for those of us (JA Grier @grierja) of the astro bent, is both cherished and oft-cursed. As in we curse a lot, not that it's cursed/hexed. Well maybe it is ...
So let's have a few polls! There will be three polls, one for space scientists, one for space enthusiasts, and one for people-who-are-checking-out-astrotweeps-but-really-don't-know-much-about-space; let's call that "space curious." Each will have an option to see results.
OK I am a TweetDeck noob but after lots of googling I cannot find a way to put in either a poll or even emojis. I'll try to figure out what I'm missing later, and for now I'll create the polls in my usual account and link to them in this thread. Whatever works ...
OK so linking all the polls from my regular account might not be the most elegant solution to TweetDeck being obtuse with me, but for now it'll do! Please do add comments with details to the polls if you'd like to be more specific about your answer.
Now that all three polls are linked to the thread, and you've responded to one before reaching this here tweet (go respond before reading on because spoilers ...)
Here's why I asked, and my hypothesis of what I (JA Grier @grierja) expect to see ...
Here's why I asked, and my hypothesis of what I (JA Grier @grierja) expect to see ...
The Space Curious usually have only looked at the sky with their eyes, but might have taken a gander through a telescope or binoculars at a science museum night, or maybe a school event. But Astrotweeps audience may of course skew this with a bias towards museum goers :)
I think most of the Space Enthusiasts and Amateur Observers have looked through or used a telescope at some point. In fact, I think there will be a higher percentage of telescopes used here than have been used by Professional Space Scientists.
For the Professionals, I think the distribution will be bimodal, with a bunch having used telescopes, and another bunch like, never having really looked up because "I use a computer to do modeling or I build rockets in a machine shop or I melt meteorites in a mass spec ..."
As someone who started their astro journey as a kid with a telescope, I was surprised to learn how much space science was done by people and in ways that did not "look up." I've talked with lots of colleagues who say they couldn't easily find Polaris in the night sky, if at all.
It's one of those misconceptions we pick up along the way, or maybe it's a stereotype really. For example ... https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1295443785548288002?s=20
This article is really interesting to me, as it both underscores many of the bizarrely wrong ideas about how we do space science, and at the same time, it actually represents a few things that are pretty accurate. It is in fact true that "amateurs" (super misleading word) ...
are a critical part of the observational astronomy community. The article makes a joke of "crowd sourcing" astronomy, but really, astronomy has been at the forefront of crowd sourcing all along. Amateurs are some of the most skilled observers in the world, and some have ...
telescopic equipment that any professional facility would be thrilled to have. But even without special skills or equipment, if you are trying to say, just spot the next incoming comet, 1000 professionals are not likely to find it before the 100,000 amateurs do. I wonder ...
what other professions have such a tight tie, an actual need, for the enthusiasts/hobbyists in their field? I mean, professional plumbers do NOT need amateur plumbers, right? Programming/coding maybe? Art? It seems to me that astro is pretty unique this way. What do you think?
(Oh, and just to be sure, if you don't know, The Onion is a joke/parody site. We are fine, no big rocks incoming, and we have plenty of eyes looking up right now in any case. As Douglas Adams would say - Do Not Panic. Go grab your towel and your digital watch and you'll be fine.)
Ok if you actually read to the end of that thread, you get a cat gif. Me right now, finally tired. Will tweet more tomorrow! (whenever that is ...)
