[Paddy (Patrick)]

It seems to me that a lot of people addicted to astronomy end up in imaging. The imaging section of this forum had a thread a while back inviting people to say why they did astrophotography. But there are quite a lot of us that stay in the realm of visual observing, eschewing laptops, CCDs and autoguiding. There may have been a thread on this before, so I apologise if it’s already been done, or if its not of interest. But I wonder what keeps people observing visually? I imagine for some it’s the expense of imaging, but for many there will be other reasons. What are yours? What do you get out of visual observing that you wouldn’t get out of making photographs? What changes have you noticed in your observing over time – how you observe, what you see, what you like to look at.

I’d love to hear about people’s passion for observing – the awe, the science, the aesthetics, whether you make notes, lists or sketches and why, do you like to see a lot of objects or do you like to take your time?

Thanks in advance to all who reply!