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Amateurs and Hobbyists

Amateurs and hobbyists have always played a significant role in the discovery and interpretation of objects in space. Will Hay, the hapless British comedian of music hall and cinema, who could write coherent sentences on a blackboard upside down and back to front, was better known among astronomers for making and designing his own astronomical instruments, such as a blink comparator and a micrometer for measuring the trajectory of comets. He discovered a mysterious white spot which appeared on Saturn during 1933, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society later the same year.

In the last two or three decades, the Canadian science writer and amateur astronomer David Levy has discovered or co-discovered 22 comets, including Shoemaker-Levy 9 which became a cause celebre when it crashed into Jupiter in 1994. However, the scope for amateurs to discover comets and asteroids has been diminished in recent years by the development of large scale specialist asteroid tracking projects which are heavily funded and use robotic telescopes to locate and track the tens of thousands of objects that are moving through the solar system.

More than most sciences there is little distinction between amateur and professional among astronomers, and amateurs can still make a difference, spot a supernova or discover an unknown comet. Data is shared and accessible to all, so the philosophy of open source and sharing of technology comes naturally to those in the world of astronomy.

Interstellar overdrive

The Linux Astronomy HOWTO which is maintained by John Huggins and Elwood Downey, the founder of XEphem and the Clear Sky Institute, includes a (slightly out of date) list of utilities for the amateur astronomer on Linux.

The most accessible of the popular planetarium programs for Linux is probably Stellarium, which is based on the Hipparcus Catalogue, the Tycho-2 Catalogue and the Naval Observatory Merged Astrometric Dataset (NOMAD), and has the capability of visualising up to 210 million stars. Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time with OpenGL, is licensed under the GPL, and is available for Linux, Windows and the Mac. Stellarium was founded by the French developer, Fabien Chéreau, and has won awards for its contributions to education.

Stellarium - a view of the planets from the Earths surface Using Stellarium, it is possible to view the night sky from any point on the planet, usually defined by a grid reference or the name of the nearest town. The user can view the sky as seen from earth, zoom in on particular features, find stars and constellations and understand their position in the sky. The Stellarium toolbar allows you to draw the outline of the constellations, to name them and draw them as picture art, draw the azimuthal and equatorial grid, remove or replace the horizon, show the cardinal points (N,S,E,W), and simulate the effects of atmosphere.

Stellarium is a perfect introductory tool for those who want to understand the movement of the stars in the skies above them.

KStars - a view of the Moon

KStars comes as part of the KDE education module (kdeedu) and does everything Stellarium does and a little bit more besides. Stellarium is slicker in appearance, but KStars is more extensible and comprehensive. KStars has extensive viewer controls, with the ability to zoom in and out, and toggle and name every object or formation in the sky. KStars is popular with amateur astronomers, includes drivers for many of the more popular brands of telescope, and provides the capability to include data from a variety of star catalogues.

Next: Set the controls for the heart of the Sun

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