Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Rob is a bit of a galaxy encyclopaedia huh? 
Mike |
Hello Mike,
Galaxies have always been 'my thing'. There is so much to be discovered; for instance nothing was known about the internal structure of NGC 253 before infrared observations were made, as it is just too dusty.
When I used to do regular visual observing, I observed galaxies nearly all of the time...
Someone at the Observing Site started screaming and jumping up & down, waving his arms in front of me with the breathless announcement "there is a - 2 magnitude comet blazing in the sky!!".....however, I didn't show the least interest in this news, and I continued observing vanishingly faint galaxies for the rest of the night.
[[ These days, I mostly leave the time-consuming & specialized process of observing & data collection to people like Strongmanmike, leaving me free to spend my time obsessing about galaxy structure and about numerical data in galaxy catalogs. ]]
I think that we all have to get specialized, eventually, in order to make further progress beyond the "intermediate-level amateur astronomer" stage; so I ended up looking at everything in astronomy from the point of view of galaxies.
I certainly greatly admire any amateur who really "knows their stuff" in their particular area of astronomical interest.
Best Regards,
Robert