SUNSET: 
18Don’t let anyone tell you your “pretty pictures” have no scientific value.
Are you doing science by just looking through a telescope? Many would say yes: You are observing and learning about real phenomena, learning to navigate the night sky, and using equipment that scientists use.
In the early days of astrophotography, the scientific community actually scoffed at those taking images at the telescope, because . . . well, who likes change, right? But that was 150 years ago. The photographic revolution turned the tables to the point where very few professional astronomers use anything but a camera to make their observations today.
Nevertheless, if you've traveled in imaging circles, you've doubtless encountered individuals on a mission to ensure that you do not squander the awesome power of modern technology by making pretty pictures. I walked out of a meeting once after a planetary imager was quite rude to deep-sky imagers, claiming "they weren't doing anything to contribute to real science."
Indeed, when I was getting started in astrophotography, I remember the pressure from my early mentors to engage in this pursuit with all the seriousness it deserved. One of them would use the term “pretty picture people,” stated with all the contempt of someone saying “con-artist.” I still recall how agitated this made me.
Richard S. Wright Jr.
I’ve long since come to terms with this quarrel, and I have my own take on the situation, which I'll outline below. It’s not unlike the Zen moment when you realize that some people are going to think the world is flat no matter what, and I can’t change their emotional commitment to that idea with additional information.
Everybody's an Expert
While I’m not a scientist, I’ve been an amateur astronomer since I was a child and I’ve written science software for decades. I’ve always tried to maintain a scientific attitude and worldview, which is to say: I believe that science is not a body of knowledge, but rather a way of determining what’s true and what’s not about the physical world.
Let me tell you something about your pursuits as an amateur astronomer. There are two kinds of scientific data: Quantitative and qualitative. I’ve never met a scientist who didn't know the difference, nor understand that both kinds of data have value. I've also met a few amateur astronomers who don’t. They tend to be the ones brow-beating that amateur “science” isn’t meeting their own amateur standards.
Courtesy of the USGS
To simplify, quantitative data is measured data. Counting the stars in an image and stating "there are 4,328 stars in this image” is a good example of quantitative data. “This is a spiral galaxy,” is an example of qualitative data. It’s a type of galaxy that we recognize and have categorized. While the statement is more subjective, it's still true because that is our convention.
“This is an unusual looking galaxy” would be an important qualitative observation, one that challenges our previous categorization schemes. Such a statement can cause scientific upheaval as much as anything unexpected in the quantitative realm.
The one and only rule about gathering qualitative data is that you can't fake the data. In other words, don't clone in stars to fill up an empty area, don't selectively rotate a galaxy but not its surrounding star field, and don't combine two nebula to make a more creative image.
However, if you assign different colors to particular wavelengths recorded in an image, or apply a non-linear stretch, that's not faking data. Nor is applying noise-reduction or sharpening. In the world of science, data processing is done all the time to uncover subtleties that wouldn't be apparent otherwise.
Richard S. Wright Jr.
If you've followed this simple philosophy and someone claims your image has no scientific value, well that's baloney. What they really mean is it has no scientific value that is of interest to them. It's an arrogant thing to say. If it’s of no interest to you, then does that mean it's not important to anyone? Are you going to let someone like that ruin your day or discourage you from continuing your hobby? I hope not.
Not Just a Pretty Picture
Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say you take some images of your favorite galaxy. You calibrate it, processes it, do all kinds of noise reduction and non-linear stretches galore. What a pretty picture of a galaxy! You post it on social media for your friends and family to see. A JPEG, no less. To add adventure to the story, let’s say your laptop is stolen at a poorly selected overnight hotel, and now you have no raw data. Just a lousy JPEG (sigh . . .)
Richard S. Wright Jr.
Nevertheless, your photo is full of important qualitative data. It is a real galaxy. While its brightness has been modified, the structure you’ve enhanced is real enough. For example, it may have four spiral arms — you didn’t remove one of them or add a new one. “This galaxy has four spiral arms” is a piece of scientific data and you’ve captured it and verified it with your “non-linear, heavily-processed, nothing-but-art” photograph.
“Wait,” a friend says. “Hey I know that galaxy, but what’s that bright star right there?” You didn’t clone brush any new stars there . . . The next night your friend images the same galaxy, records the same star, carefully calibrates the data and does some photometry to determine its brightness. Hey! It’s a supernova! Your friend has gathered quantitative scientific data on the supernova by measuring its brightness, based on your qualitative data that there is a star there where there wasn’t one before.
Congratulations, you’ve both done science. And you my friend, have discovered a supernova . . . using a JPEG no less.
The world is always going to have the kind of people in it who will walk into a 7th grade science fair to tell children that they aren’t contributing anything at all to science. Don’t be that person, and don’t let that person ruin your love of science or astrophotography either. You don't have to be discovering something new to be doing science. Repeatability is a hallmark of the scientific method. So just think of it as repeating the experiment and making sure the results haven't changed!
Comments
Richard-Lighthill
August 18, 2020 at 6:15 pm
Great article, Richard! Yes, I have heard a famous astronomer from Mauna Kea use that "pretty picture" term about those of us who do astrophotography in our backyards. Have to say that I was shocked. After having participated in the Citizen CATE solar experiment with the National Solar Observatory in 2017, which was a childhood dream of doing "real data gathering for science" I suppose he thought that not having a 10 meter telescope at my disposal made me of little consequence as we used only 80mm refractors to gather images. The "My telescope is BIGGER than yours therefore I am doing REAL science" is almost bullying! Oh, well, like you said, "I’ve long since come to terms with this quarrel." In fact, it is those "pretty pictures" that have sprouted in people the desire to pursue the science of astronomy and some for a lifetime profession. So there is nothing wrong with "pretty pictures". Thanks again for a great perspective!
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wizabang
August 24, 2020 at 9:44 am
Ar one time or another all of us astro-photographers will be asked "why did you make it that color? or a similar response. I know I have.
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Martian-Bachelor
August 18, 2020 at 6:45 pm
LOL - Speaking of supernovae, Fritz Zwicky had a rant in his book Morphological Astronomy about Edwin Hubble wasting so much 200" telescope time taking "pretty pictures by the trunk load", many of which eventually went into The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies. So this particular put-down has a long history.
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Alain Maury
August 19, 2020 at 12:52 am
Mmmhhh, mixed opinion about all this. The reality is that even amateurs who understand they can do science with their telescopes have a harder and harder time to do it. Long gone are the time of the Bradfield's and Evan's (respectively visual comet hunter and supernova hunter). The large surveys are making it harder and harder to do any useful contribution with a small telescope and a lousy city sky. So people who don't even know they might have something interesting on their hour long exposures have to have a lot of luck to do any useful scientific contribution. Then also "discovering something on an image" is not doing science. Neither is taking the spectra of a comet even though it looks already much more "scientific". It takes quite a lot of time and practice before being able to look at a spectra and say anything useful about it. Where I have seen professionals looking at a supernova spectra and say immediately something like "this is a type II supernova, 2 weeks after explosion", I never saw an amateur doing it. Then, there are like a couple of supernovae of the many hundreds detected each year which are reachable with amateur telescopes and spectrographs. Same for comet spectra, even the pros have problems deciphering all the details in them. There are still a few niches out there, a look at the recent MPEC tells you that amateurs with telescopes larger than 50cm, and 1m better, can follow up most of the recently discovered NEOs which are between magnitude 21 and 22. There are still a few amateurs discovering NEOs, but like a handful each year, compared to a few thousands by the professional surveys. The golden age of amateur science in astronomy is gone.
People selling 8 to 10cm diameter robotic telescopes claiming they can be used for "science" should learn a little bit about astronomy in 2020 before making such invalid publicity claims (or show publications done using observations made with these toys).
A last point, about the so called "citizen science", looks cool, some pros who were unable to program an IA software were able to find slaves to do what they couldn't do. Then again, it's funnier and nerdier to look at galaxies or curves than to spend evenings on netflix. Or is it ?
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gabol96
August 19, 2020 at 6:46 am
Well, I think you're mistaking "doing science" for "making discoveries." Pretty much everything you do in science class in school is not "making discoveries," but it is still "doing science." Even the act of making a discovery requires someone to replicate whatever work you were doing. Science is "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." I don't think anyone could argue that observational astronomy and astrophotography doesn't fall within that definition.
I think you also missed the quantitative vs. qualitative point of the piece. A ton of science is qualitative and is no less worthy of being called science than quantitative science. Most of the time, a qualitative observation is necessary to beget a quantitative one. The most famous of those being the apple falling on Newton's head. So, making an observation of a new "star" where there was none before absolutely qualifies as science.
8 to 10cm telescopes can absolutely be used to do science. You can track the movements of the cloud bands of Jupiter or the dust storms on mars. You can observe the extinction across the galactic disc at varying wavelengths. You can even, if you like, measure the magnitude of the new Starlink satellites with their sunshade, so you can be mad at Elon Musk with data. For that last one, you will even be making a discovery too.
I studied astronomy in school and continue to work with professional astronomers using large telescopes in different parts of the world. Not one of them have ever, or likely would ever, say that observational astronomy or astrophotography is not science.
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Alain Maury
August 20, 2020 at 4:00 am
My main point is that it's getting almost impossible for an amateur to make discoveries, and let alone do useful science.
I guess you don't know what you are talking about when you talk about tracking the movements of the clouds bands of Jupiter with an 8 to 10cm telescope. I tried to look on google to see if I could see images taken with one of these telescopes, and really, you can't do anything with these images except saying there seems to be 2 bands on Jupiter and that Mars is orange (I found for example https://www.facebook.com/Joes-astronomy-page-139106906452017/photos ). I don't know if you ever tried to measure the magnitude of a trailing object, but it's kind of hard. For now the first problem is to be able to point one such satellite in real time, but soon this will be solved, you'll have a track of these vermins of the sky on most of your images. But anyway, I don't have any problems with the idea, if somebody can show me some publications made with these toys.
Facts :
In 2019 2 NEOs were discovered by amateurs, out of 2433 discovered that year. Look at http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/supernova.html and tell me if you see the name of an amateur...
There was the case of a Victor Buso from Argentina who caught the explosion of a SN in a galaxy in 2016... But to me that falls in the category of "lots of luck".
Comet outbursts and other events are still sometimes discovered by amateurs.
Some amateurs do observe exoplanets light curves, but compared to the mass of data obtained by professional, it's a very small percentage.
I didn't say it was "impossible" to make any science with amateur telescopes, I said it was getting more difficult, and you really need a lot of luck to be in a situation to see something which hasn't been seen yet with a 2m telescope sifting through terabytes of nightly data.
But it's good to be optimistic.
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Arnaud
August 19, 2020 at 8:20 am
An interesting debate and a question I have often asked myself. While I love to see or create a nice astro picture, the question "so what?" regularly comes to my mind. First, I think there is nothing wrong, at all, at creating pretty pictures. It brings joy to many people and that's a justification in itself.
Doing science is another business. It takes equipment (but not necessarily completely out of amateur reach, depending on the objective), it takes some level of knowledge (possibly the hardest part) and it takes a plan.
As pointed out by Alain, I think that we should also make the difference between "doing science" and "making a discovery". When the Gaia people work on creating their catalog, they are no doubt doing science, while they may not be directly making discoveries. The same applies to amateurs: if you are the first to observe a new SN, you will be contributing to science in a similar, albeit smaller scale, as the Gaia people. You will contribute to a catalog of SN's, not more, not less. And that is quite alright.
Some times ago, I have decided to try to go a bit deeper into a more scientific approach and have done a few projects: I built a wavefront sensor and wrote the code to analyse the data, I have measured the caracteristics of an exoplanet (orbit, size, temperature) from observations I made with a C8, and more recently I measured the ratio of dark to visible matter in the Virgo cluster. While none of these projects has led to any new knowledge for humanity, they have taught me a lot about the practice of science: the rigor of the planning, the testing, the modeling, the data acquisition and its analysis, the ever present problem of noise, etc. It has been a great journey for me and have come to respect even more the scientists who do that on a daily basis. I am planning to do more projects in the future and would definitely encourage anyone to try that way of doing amateur astronomy, at least once.
To conclude, I would like to underscore the need for respect. We are all different, have different means and capabilities and we should respect and value the contributions of everyone to astronomy, however grand or small they might be.
Arnaud Debuchy
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Stub Mandrel
August 20, 2020 at 3:09 am
This discussion is very erudite. The truth is simpler. There are some rather sad people who are simply jealous that amateurs can make such striking images.
As a botanist, are pictures of pretty flowers science? If you are interested in which flowers, where they are and why, or understanding their structure and growth of course it is.
Personally, I find astrophotography a dual challenge: getting the best out of my equipped data; and understanding what I see. The science is that second part, it's in looking at your image with a curious eye.
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Alain Maury
August 20, 2020 at 4:39 am
I don't believe there are people who are "jealous" of amateur photographs of the sky. Most professionals just don't care. The others have a "good for you" type of attitude. Some find them nice or striking eventually, but jealous...
The most "striking" photographs of well known nebulae are taken with professional equipment. I am not even talking about the HST gallery, but look for recent publications on M51 (there is quite a large Ha cloud above the galaxy much further away than what typical amateur "deep" images reveal) or deep images of M31 to understand what striking means. They are mostly ugly (black and white, poorly done mosaics), but going to such depth, that it's really striking.
As far as I am concerned, I find SHO images ugly, even though I understand that for most people it's the only thing they can do from their light polluted skies. Same for images of galaxies where the arms of the galaxy are shown in purple (have you ever seen a purple star ?) and the center deep red. I guess everybody is free to publish what they want, and I am free to find them unrealistic or processed like a pig. But that my choice and I stand by it :). And happily so. 🙂
Your definition of science is yours. There are multiple scientific activities, but mostly science is when you are able to explain something new. First step is to obtain relevant data, second is to explain what you see, if possible in a manner that brings something to our current knowledge. You looking at your image with a curious eye is not science. It's looking at your image with a curious eye. Seeing that such galaxy has spiral arms is not science, it was discovered more than a century ago. Back then it was science. Seeing that this nebula is red because it contains hydrogen has also been discovered a century ago. You understand what you see because people a long time ago discovered that, and you know of it. It's not a discovery (maybe for you), and it's not science. To be science you would need maybe to measure something on your image, and then have a sufficient theoretical background to make something (new) of it.
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relh
August 21, 2020 at 5:29 pm
Mr. Maury, you appear to be an intellectual snob. It is the interest of serious amateurs that gives life to astronomy and allied fields. Remember also that the sciences are funded because non-specialists – i.e., those who are not 'professionals' – allow it. It is often the beauty of 'pretty pictures' and not the science (e.g., chemical make-up of a nebula or the atmosphere of Venus) that interests the public who funds modern scientific study. Don't bite the nand that feeds you.
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relh
August 21, 2020 at 5:43 pm
Or the hand that feeds you.
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Warren-Odom
August 21, 2020 at 10:59 pm
I read the comments with some bemusement. There is certainly more than one way to do science. Kepler's advancements such as the Laws of Motion benefitted greatly from Tycho Brahe's decades of detailed observations. They are both considered important scientists -- important enough to have sizable Moon craters named after them!
For citizen science, observations are valuable, if systematized and proper records are kept, etc. One area of valid contribution requiring NO equipment is observations of light pollution and its changes over time (see https://www.globeatnight.org/ ). In fact a relative of mine did a very similar study for a science fair project, and then won 2nd place in an invitational competition in another state. In his case the "pretty picture" was a color-coded light pollution map of his entire city.
So relax! There's enough different kinds of science for just about everyone!
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Warren-Odom
August 21, 2020 at 11:12 pm
And I forgot to mention the other example I was thinking of -- the recent enlistment of "citizen scientists" from the public to scrutinize photos of the asteroid Bennu to help locate a safe landing site for NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
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Richard S. Wright Jr.Post Author
August 24, 2020 at 12:30 pm
Context is important in any discussion about vocabulary, and I think some have far too narrow a view of what "counts as science" for this context. I was very careful to define science as the "process" by which we examine the physical world. It's how we know and verify what is true and objective about the universe and our place in it. I take this from Carl Sagan's definition and discussions on the topic, but I realize that Sagan also had his critics. To be more clear, in this context when I say "doing science", I mean observing, validating, and discovering. Discovering can be for oneself, OR for the world at large.
A sports analogy may be more illustrative. Some people like to play basketball. Some do it with friends, some do it for school or local leagues, some professionally. Imagine if you will Michael Jordan showing up at a neighborhood park and telling the people there that what they were doing was a joke, and not really basketball. That what they were doing didn't count because there was no trophy or championship at stake. No reporters were there to cover the game and publish the highlights. Their ball was a cheap toy purchased at a department store. No one in the sports community really cared that they existed at all in fact. It would be pretty silly wouldn't it? So... showing up at an astronomy club, gathering, or forum and doing the same thing is also, a bit silly I think.
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Chip-Sniffer
August 30, 2020 at 6:31 pm
I am an imager that has been imaging since film and hand guiding in the early '90s.
I have had articles in both S&T and Astronomy and quite a few published images in both magazines as well as elsewhere. I have had none of those in the past 10 years largely because I finally concluded that it is not worth the trouble. As they say about medals in the military: "With that and a few bucks, you can buy a cup of coffee".
What does this have to do with how I feel about this debate, you might ask?
The answer is that I do my hobby because I enjoy it and I enjoy interacting with the others that are in the hobby and with that part of the general public that has an interest. Do I care whether I am published anymore? No. Do I care if others think my hobby is worthwhile? No. Do I worry that my hobby is not worthwhile because it is not hard science? No.
It is a hobby. I enjoy it. It is fulfilling to master the hobby at ever greater levels due to increasingly better tech and my own hopefully improving skills. It is fun to interact with others within and without the hobby. In that it is no different than any other hobby, especially those involving taking images of terrestrial subjects.
I admire and am interested in the science generated by the professionals but do not care once whit about their opinion of my hobby and even less about those of other amateurs who are arrogant enough to look down on those of us who are such "fools" as to enjoy taking pretty pictures.
https://www.astrobin.com/users/CCDnOES/
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mark seibold
May 18, 2021 at 6:33 am
Great article. Although I also enjoyed others comments here, Richard's article got me to think a lot about my own scientific process over the years. At the risk of writing long essay to entertain others which I've known to do quite often for my friends in social sites which I know most of them as non astronomers.
I've covered so many areas of astronomy and even touched on professional at times. My most often engaging experience is providing free public sidewalk astronomy for tens of thousands of hours over the past couple decades for the general public at large.
I also have a great honor of being asked to provide one of my award-winning large pastel sketches to be published in full page format in Sky & Telescopes gallery last year in their May 2020 issue.
Lastly I must mention that I have produced possibly over hundreds if not thousands of astrophotographs since I first started it about age 13 or 14. I had purchased my first astronomy telescope new at a local hobby shop after saving my berry picking money. It was a simple Tasco 60mm refractor only mounted on a Alt-azimuth tripod. Being rather limited with photographic capability, other than playing with my parents Kodak box camera since they handed it to me at about the age of two or three on my birthdays to photograph others, I decided to crudely attach it to the top of my Tasco telescope, after finding out it had an indefinite time exposure shutter setting. I had read a little bit in one of my earliest astronomy books about instructions to perform astrophotography. I tripped the shutter to remain open and manually guided on one of Orion's Belt Stars through the eyepiece for 5 minutes. A general view of the camera was rather a wide field and I knew it would capture the entire constellation, my intent in this experiment when I was not quite yet age 14 was to see how well my chosen fast film loaded to the camera of Kodak Tri-X ASA-400 would capture the Orion Nebula. I could hardly wait to take the film to the processing at a local store. My astronomy book had advised to communicate to the film processing people to not cut the negatives, as they would appear as unexposed, and the processors might possibly cut into some of the exposed frames. I was delighted when I received the film back as a complete role. I unfurled it to look at one or two of the frames I took of Orion and it definitely captured the Great Nebula M42. Although the constellation slightly turned or rolled in my 5-minute exposure and I knew this was due to the al-Alt-azimuth mounted telescope, rather than a required equatorial mount for proper tracking of the sky.
However I was delighted enough to show my parents and a science teacher at my junior high school. As soon established me as a rather young and budding amateur astronomer but many considered me as much more professional from there on.
It wasn't till perhaps several years later when I finally bought a better 35 mm camera and began photographing the Aurora Borealis at about the time of high school graduation in 1972. However it took me another couple of decades to get more serious about astrophotography when I began to attend the Oregon Star Parties in Central Oregon, every August for a nearly continuous run of 10 years. Astronomy Magazine had published my images, the first in September 1994 as awarded best of the month, in full page format, and later in the December 1994 issue the same nearly duplicate photograph but the tree nearly entirely painted with red light by an unbeknownst bystander, of an old deadwood ponderosa pine tree in the high Oregon desert. This was simply made with my earlier acquired college days 35mm camera mounted on a tripod recording the circumpolar constellations turning for nearly an hour with the North Star Polaris over the top of the trees bare branches below.
Since then the world of digital photography as we all came to eventually know has virtually taken over in recent years. I was given a modest 5 inch Celestron Cassegrain telescope in 2004 by Celestron sales representatives, when I was asked to travel overseas and teach some astronomy. This was an exciting adventure as it was below the equator in the Fiji Islands. I also provided the telescope in their local streets often, and also along with an acquired 10-inch Newtonian telescope, allowing the public to view Saturn's rings and Jupiter and its moons, and our moon through the phases as I spent up to a month at a time there in the Islands for three separate trips which totaled over the better part of the years stay, as my second wife was from that location.
I had already previously taken a 10,000 mile road trip across the US continent and into Eastern Canada with a special hydrogen alpha solar filtered telescope borrowed from my astronomy club in Orland Oregon from May through June 2000. Over a six week solo road trip across the continent I allowed hundreds if not over 1,000 people to view the Sun during its solar sunspot maximum with spectacular edge prominences and solar flares observed live. Many of the attending public claimed that the observations of this image change their lives. I kept a guest registry and allowed people to write comments reflecting their experience of this. I also made audio recordings totally in over 100 hours, asking them to describe the image to me as they observed it. I edited the audio recordings down to 15 minutes of the best excerpts of perhaps a few dozen some in different foreign languages. I published this to my Mark Seibold YouTube channel in late 2012. Is the main headline video at the top of my YouTube channel page.
I later spoke of this on national public radio's Talk of the Nation program, as I held the record for calling into their show for the last 7 years that it was broadcast between 2005 and 2013.
So to think I started with my crude astrophotography at age 13 or 14, it became a catalyst to propel me forward and still today I'm providing thousands of hours of sidewalk astronomy and showing the public how to take Astro photos through telescopes while I'm out conducting what most would think is simply only observing live through a telescope.
I don't know if I actually have a valid login but I figured I just did login so I'm going to attempt to submit this.
Thanks again to Richard for writing this great article, as it definitely inspired me to reflect on my life of conducting the scientific methods and creative artistic process with so many thousands of the public, my friends, my schoolmates, neighbors, my parents, and my younger brother and sister, for most of my life.
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mark seibold
May 18, 2021 at 7:11 am
I was afraid that the S & T article wouldn't post my comment. Either because I thought I didn't have a valid login to S &T, or I might have written too long and passed the limit of words allowed.
But I see it's taken and already appearing here as posted immediately.
I meant to also add that I didn't learn my sidewalk astronomy from anyone but myself as self-taught from about the age of 13 or 14 when I bought that first Tasco telescope with my berry picking money in 1967 for $79.95 at a local hobby shop.
I helped to design and build our first home for my first wife and daughter and I, in an east of Portland Oregon suburb, near the Columbia River Gorge, that had relatively dark skies. We took our young daughter to the local Community College as the planetarium director there offered great planetarium shows for the public. The Community College astronomy teacher and planetarium director eventually mentioned the name of John Dobson, and he requested that Dobson come and speak at the community college a few times over the years. As Dobson was staying West of the capital city of Oregon, Salem, at the Western Oregon University area conducting his telescope building classes every year. I also drove down to watch him conduct some of the classes, [although I never initiated to take one of the telescope building classes,] and then at the end of each class Dobson would give a short lecture in the college about physics.
The experiences of listening to Dobson didn't necessarily teach me about sidewalk astronomy which I'd already been doing as a child for my friends and neighbors and family, but what really confirmed me to readdress the sidewalk astronomy as an adult was possibly Dobson's great example.
I later worked at an astronomy store North of Portland Oregon in the city of Battleground Washington about a 30 mile drive North from Central Portland. As Dobson was invited to stay there at the store and the owner's property to conduct his telescope building classes and astronomy lectures, I initiated to take Dobson to local schools to lecture to young students. It was delightful to listen to him speak in classes for the young students level.
I also initiated to ask the owners of the astronomy store if I could take Dobson out in the evenings to perform some sidewalk astronomy on the Portland streets and in front of public coffee houses where people seem to have the time and the interest of you through several different telescopes we took. When my first call to the people that were hosting Dobson where he stayed near the Western Oregon University, to bring him to the famous science museum, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, located in the Central downtown Portland area. As many of the public walked up on that Saturday at midday, where we conducted solar sidewalk astronomy with a h-alpha filtered telescope abd one of Dobson's home built solar telescopes, as many of the public were exiting the museum, they immediately identified and remembered from seeing Dobson on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show some years before. Much of the public were just simply delighted and amazed to talk to him personally for their first time.
I later decided to drive to the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles from my home near Portland to attend Dobson's 95th birthday in 2010. I'd sketched a large pastel of him with one of his telescopes and the public observing through it to take to him as a birthday gift. The director at the Griffith Park Observatory handed me the bullhorn to speak to the public and I talked about the importance of making observations and then producing technical art from these observations. I did not realize that I was being recorded on video without my knowledge until I accidentally discovered it about 5 months later while staying with a lady friend near the San Francisco Bay Area. The video was made by a gentleman that heads a group of Southwest California Astronomers in the Death Valley area. The video can simply be found by searching the words John Dobson 95th birthday at Griffith Park Observatory.
It only runs a few minutes as we sing Happy Birthday to Dobson, then the director hands me the bullhorn to introduce my pastel sketch. As earlier taking one of my astronomy students from a class I taught here in Portland to see Dobson while he was staying near the capital city in Oregon again to conduct his astronomy classes. As I told the crowd and Dobson on that visit that day at Griffith Park Observatory for his 95th birthday, that I was making technical sketches from observations through my telescopes and these sketches were published by NASA websites quite often, Dobson immediately said to me, "you see more when you sketch". I mentioned this to the crowd at Griffith Park Observatory that day, as I felt that it was important for them to understand the Scientific Process melding with the Arts.
It was a few years later just after he had turned the age of 98 that his secretary, Donna, called me, as she explained that he had fallen ill. I was saddened to hear this. I believe she had said something like, I need to come down and see him before he's gone, because she thought that maybe I could take over for him doing the sidewalk astronomy like he did for so many years, although I had never built a telescope. I was deeply humbled and honored at the same time. Sadly he passed away within a week later. I drove to LA again to attend the funeral at the Vedanta (sp?) Monastery in Hollywood.
It was a humbling yet honorable experience to meet so many people that knew him long before I did. Many of them reflected on how he had come to their high schools when they were just young students back in the 1970s.
Many approached the podium during the eulogy and broke down in tears as they spoke about him. Although I'll always remember Dobson being featured in the first opening part of six parts, a PBS special broadcast across America in 1991, The Astronomers. Dobson was shown conducting one of his telescope building classes in the San Francisco Science Museum. I'm sure others here remember watching this, as the first part is still available on YouTube for free.
Dobson talks about the importance of observing and that the Dobsonian mount is not made to track the sky for photography. He then says, if you want to do photography you've got a disease.
I harkened back to the local astronomy professor at the community college, as he played a portion of this PBS Astronomers video for his students, and then he has me talk about and show my large astrophotography prints on easels just after Dobson's words and n the video.
It was a strange juxtaposition to put me in that position in front of his class in the planetarium. But here again is life's great collision of related Art and Science that becomes a learning lesson for all to glean from.
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mark seibold
May 18, 2021 at 7:19 am
My apologies for a voice text typo in my first written comment above. The misspelling of the city location, [that I borrowed the h-alpha solar telescope from my astronomy club in 'Orland Oregon', should be 'Portland Oregon'.]
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