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[Fwd: A Curious Article in Mercury]

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Tom Droege wrote:

> As a member of PASP I get the Mercury (v31 n4).  I seldom read it although
> it is a very fine magazine and has very good general articles.  Because I
> was back from my trip and not trying to do much of anything I read it.  I
> just happened to look at the front of the magazine where they were listing
> the ASP awards.  There was Bohden Paczynski getting their most prestigious
> award, the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal.  So I read the write up.

He was featured in a recent NOVA episode on GRBs (NOVA #2901: Death Star,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/gamma/).  The other GRB theorist (Don Lamb) is a
twin brother of my former neighbor (astrophysicist, PhD Cambridge I think,
Caltech undergrad) growing up (whose wife is an astronomer).  My former
neighbor's specialty is black-holes.


Broadcast Transcript
PBS Air date: January 8, 2002

NARRATOR: Whatever was creating the bursts, it was difficult to see. But Don
Lamb and other theorists knew of an object that might just fit the bill.
....
DON LAMB: One might say it was a golden age of theories in gamma ray bursts
because the constraints from the observations were so sparse, were so limited,
that it gave free reign to the imaginations of theorists in this era.
..
NARRATOR: As more gamma ray bursts were located, they too came from random
positions around the sky. Most astronomers believed they simply weren't seeing
far enough into our galaxy to detect the full extent of the Milky Way. But one
man thought the bursts were further than they could possibly imagine. Bohdan
Paczynski thought everyone was thinking small.

BOHDAN PACZYNSKI (Princeton University): When I was first interested in gamma
ray bursts they were generally believed to be in our galaxy. However, the
single, most clear evidence of them being in our galaxy, our Milky Way, was
missing. They were not seen against the Milky Way. They were everywhere, all
over the sky. And that left just two possibilities: either they were very,
very close to us, so close that the Milky Way was too far away to be seen, or
just as well, they could have been very, very far away. And that's what I
decided to go for
...
NARRATOR: When the news was announced it was a moment of triumph for Bohdan
Paczynski.

BOHDAN PACZYNSKI: That was for me quite an emotional experience. To see 50
percent of people instantly accepting the obvious consequences and saying,
"Okay, we goofed for ten years. Now we decided the data is unambiguous. Bursts
are at cosmological distances." That was sort of rationale for me.

NARRATOR: But his triumph was diminished by the lingering resistance to his
big idea.

BOHDAN PACZYNSKI: What was truly amazing was another 50 percent of the
audience was unmoved.
----------------


>
>
> Near the end was a whole paragraph about tass.  I could not believe
> it!  Here is one of the more famous astronomers of the day getting an award
> and somehow tass is mentioned.
>
> I quote:
>
>       "In recent years, Paczynski has advised amateur astronomers who
> organized The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS).  TASS is an informal
> group of mostly amateur astronomers who build and operated CCD
> cameras to s8urvey the night sky for transient events such as novae
> and variable stars.  TASS has been taking data since 1998."
>
> This is right in there with his other achievements such as theories of
> interacting binary stars, cataclysmic variables, using gravitational
> microlensing to search for dark matter and his concept that gamma ray
> bursts must occur at cosmological distances.
>
> How in the world did we get mixed in with all these great achievements!
>
> Bohden has been a great help to me, and has been very encouraging.  So I
> very much appreciate his support.  But the last thing I expected was to see
> a mention in his award write up.
>
> Well, I just looked at the PASP write up at
> http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Paczynski/index.html
> which is different from that in Mercury.  I suspect that Bohden intended to
> reference ASAS which is the survey that he supports directly and whoever
> wrote up the Mercury article got TASS mixed up with ASAS.  Still, they got
> the reference right, so someone at PASP knows about TASS.
>
> I am amused.
>
> Tom Droege

There was a reference to amateur-astronomy in the above website:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/gamma/groot2.html

NOVA:So, in this golden age, can amateur astronomers still make contributions
to astronomy?

Groot: Yes, absolutely. No doubt there. For one thing, when we professional
astronomers go observing, we apply for time on a telescope, and inevitably
there are too many people, so cuts have to be made. We end up being able to
use
the telescope for only a very limited number of nights, say four or five, a
week perhaps, two weeks if we're very lucky. That means we can only study
stars, for instance, for that short period, and what happens after that and in

the long-term remains unknown.
Amateur astronomers have the luxury of having a telescope all to themselves,
because it's in the backyard, and they can observe whenever they want. It's
through amateur observers that we often find, for instance, new stars. People
look at a patch of sky, and all of a sudden there's a new star appearing
there,
which is a star that was already there but it has suddenly become much
brighter. A lot of the work of discovering supernovae is actually done by
amateur astronomers.

NOVA: It sounds like collaboration, or openness, comes naturally to
astronomers. But isn't there fierce competition as well, in which people sort
of horde their data until they get the right place to publish it, say?<br
/><br />

Groot: It's a bit of both, I would say, but I think the openness prevails.
Astronomers in general are quite relaxed and quite open about their
observations. As an observer, often you're the only one looking at a
particular
patch of sky, so it's very hard for other astronomers to steal your results.
Hoarding does happen sometimes; people do keep data to themselves. But I think

in general it's quite relaxed, and I like that.
----------

I've heard this from some professional astronomers (incl a Caltech computer
scientist I know), but I think this is wishful thinking.  The reality,
unfortunately, is a lack of technical skills.  The Internet, along with the
availability of "canned-programs" (Catalog Astronomy, as Jeff Beish/ALPO puts
it), lets any amateur try to play "professional":

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and
better idiot-proof programs [ Photoshop for amateur astrophotography, xxx for
data-collection ], and the Universe trying to
produce bigger and better idiots [ Photoshop hacks, data-collection hacks ].
So far, the Universe is winning."
-- Rich Cook, programmer

I got flamed off amateur astrophoto & CCD list, for pointing out basic errors
in physics & math (at the high school level!).

http://www.usatoday.org/news/ndssun04.htm

Study Finds Errors Rife in Science Textbooks

None of the 12 textbooks has an acceptable level of accuracy, said John
Hubisz,
  a North Carolina State University physics professor who led the two-year
survey,
  released earlier this month.

''The books have a very large number of errors, many irrelevant photographs,
  complicated illustrations, experiments that could not possibly work [ this
is what might be of concern for TASS ], and drawings
  that represented impossible situations,''
  ''These are basic errors,'' Hubisz said. ''It's stuff that anyone who had
taken a science class would be able to catch.''

There was a somewhat recent flare-up on TASS, which reflected the problem of
quality data-gathering & analysis.  Let's face it, you need to have some
rigorous science training to do this RIGHT (for the results to be meaningful
to scientists).  My PhD advisor only hired the best students, period.
Anything less, he would not consider.

"<get good faculty, develop the best students>"
-- Dr. Harold Zirin, Caltech astrophysicist, "Astrophysics of the Sun",
Foreword
[ referring to the problem of funding ground based solar astronomy. I don't
have the text handy, for the exact quote ]

OTOH, there is quite a growing voice of discontent by many professional
astronomers, about the lack of technical abilities in amateurs.


"I maintain that, as a whole, modern-day amateur astronomers in the U.S. &
Canada perform dismally compare to those in several other parts of the
world... .. Yet  if amateurs want to be taken seriously by professionals they
must perform to PROFESSIONAL standards. These standards involve no just the
act of observing, but a moderately QUANTITATIVE understanding of what an
observation means and how to make it connect to other informaion that may be
available.  Such work requires more scientific literacy than many North
American amateurs seem to possess"
-- Sky & Telescope, Nov 1988, Dr. Brian Marsden, Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics

"Unfortunately, my experience is that many professional astronomers do look
down somewhat on amateurs.  They see amateurs as trying to do "real"
astronomy but not having the background and understanding."
-- Mike Simmons, Medical researcher, UCLA (Mt. Wilson Observatory Assn)


"The authors are themselves amateurs, and when they venture into
scientific topics their information is limited & sometimes outright wrong.."
-- Harold Zirin, Astrophysicist, Caltech (Sky & Telescope, March 1997, p. 64)


"J. David Neelin, atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, said computing is ultimately just another tool, like a laptop is for
a student assigned to write a paper.
A faster machine [ fancy telescope/data-gatherer ] does not guarantee
quality.  'Are they going to get that essay out any faster or is it going to
be any better? Well, their spell checker is going to run a little faster,' he
said. 'In the end, it's the
thought [ technical abilities ] that goes into it that really makes the
essay.'"
-- CNN.com, "Customized supercomputer wins speed race"
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/07/22/supercomputer.race.ap/index.html

"Well, my opinion of the went-down-the-tubes-many-years-ago S&T is
similar to what you have expressed yourself before.  During my formative
years in the 60's and 70's I savored every word and it fueled my evolving
interest and intellect.  When it became a glitzy pulp production many years
back with more fluff than substance I sadly canceled my subscription
shaking my head."
"I haven't read S&T in 10 years"
-- Dr. XX XXXX, Steward Observatory, U of Arizona
[ he is a HST instrument specialist/astronomer, with many HST image credits ]

 "I also miss those particular columns, especially "Gleanings for
ATMs".  Most of the current telescope-making articles are not nearly
as interesting to me as the contents of "Gleanings" usually was.  I
also wish they could come up with a more elegant cover format -- I
liked the old logo, and I am sure they could find photographs at least
as interesting as the artist's impression stuff that is not so common.
When the major format switch took place a few years ago, my friends
and I informally dubbed the magazine "National Sky Enquirer"...
-- Jay Reynolds Freeman (PhD physics, UC Berkeley I think),  Re: SKY AND
TELESCOPE; Yesterday and Today,
sci.astro.amateur

"<If you can read S&T front to back in the time it takes while taking a
dump, I figure it ain't worth the bucks>"
-- Brad Wallis (physicist), JPL, Cassini


"A comment on Greg Crawford statemant that he "sacrificed
                  thousands of dollars in personal income in order to
contribute to
                  a science...". The amateurs who take "pretty pictures",
which we
                  consider of NO SCIENTIFIC VALUE, are also apt to spend large
sums
                  of money on their equipment. And so are the individuals
whose
                  hobby or passion is boating, playing a musical intrument,
                  traveling, collecting, etc. I consider the money and time
that
                  I spent on astrometry a source of great satisfaction and
also,
                  I must admit, a little pride."
-- Paul Comba, Minor Planet mailing list
[ formerly with Mt. Wilson ]

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