Observing Projects

Data Acquisition

One of the ways in which amateur astronomers can contribute scientific data of value to professional astronomers is by making numerical observations which are too time- and resource-consuming for professionals to undertake. Here are the three ongoing projects in which I accumulate such data points and submit them to international data collection organizations, totals as of 2010 08 28:

Organization	Type of data	Begun	1959	1960	1961	1962	1963	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Total
ALPO	Jupiter central meridian transits	1959 06 05	149	157	514	111	39	50	57	15	5	4	219	38		6		1364
AAVSO	Variable star estimates	1963 05 16					7	4	69	318	256	168	92	191	134	151	65	1455

Cosmic Bird Watching

If galaxies were birds, then what we do would be called bird watching, not ornithology. "Cosmic bird watching" might be a good catch-phrase for what deep-sky observing is all about.

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman

These are the objects on various lists of astronomical targets which I have observed as of 2008 03 04:

Project	Begun	Completed	Objects	Observed	%	Unobserved	%
Messier's Catalog (original) [1]	1957 09 30	1959 10 21	106	106	100	0	0
Messier's Catalog (recent) [1]	1997 07 06	2000 04 28	110	110	100	0	0
RASC Finest NGC	1959 06 05	2001 03 16	110	110	100	0	0
AL Double Stars	1998 08 19	2003 04 23	100	100	100	0	0
AL Herschel 400	1958 08 04	2006 04 25	400	400	100	0	0
NSOG **** and ***** [2]	1957 09 30		400	307	77	93	23
RASC Southern-Hemisphere Splendours	1959 05 03		73	31	42	42	58
Caldwell Objects	1959 09 07		109	72	66	37	34
All deep sky objects	1957 09 30			659

Notes:

1. When I first observed Messier's Catalog in 1957-1959, there were only 106 officially recognized objects on the list. These observations were made as a member of the Messier Club of the RASC Montréal Centre, the first such project as far as I know. I was only the fourth person to complete the list, the first three being Tom Noseworthy, Ted Morris, and Constantine Papacosmas. When I got back into astronomy in 1997, four more objects had been added to the list, and I decided to reobserve the whole catalog to refresh my knowledge of the sky.

2. These are all the deep sky objects which rate four or five stars in George Robert Kepple and Glen Sanner: The Night Sky Observer’s Guide (Willmann-Bell). The list is available here.

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