I am becoming increasingly despondent over the word "Australian" being used in conjunction with "Sky and Telescope" Magazine
For anyone who has followed Australian Sky & Telescope since its release in January 2005 and have a copy of that very first issue, there is an article by Australian amateur astronomer Steve Massey about imaging the thermal emissions of the night side of crescent Venus in the morning sky of June 2nd 2004.
In some kind of strange irony, as the magazine celebrates on the cover of the latest edition "50th issue" January 2011, there is a story extracted from the U.S magazine about imaging the night side of Venus by Daniele Gasparri. It immediately occurred to me.. wow, I'm sure I've heard of this before. It mentions Christophe Pellier as the first amateur astronomer in the world to image the thermal emission of the dark side of Venus very near to inferior conjunction which is, I think, technically right. In curiosity though I scrambled through all my old AS&T issues dating back to the first special collectors issue and behold, an article by an Aussie on just this same imaging technique.
To my surprise and given that our own AS&T is supposed to be customised for Australian consumption, it sadly neglects to mention the achievements of one of our own Aussie amateurs, Steve Massey who imaged the planet with even more detail in near infrared only weeks after Pellier's announcement. He had also been planning this for sometime an may perhaps have beaten the Frenchman's achievement had it not been for some problematic calculations and timing according to the AS&T article.
While it's probably no direct fault of AS&T not to mention or even feature one of Massey's images published from that first issue in this current one, but it is interesting to note how Americans and their European counterparts live in somewhat of an insular existence.. I Quote "in recent years a number of amateurs have also captured this phenomenon.."
Well not just in recent years guys! Aside from Massey achieving it a only few weeks after Pellier, during the following apparition, a bloke in the U.S.A became the 3rd amateur then followed closely by others including another Aussie.
But as always we are led by the USA edition. How strange that the first "Australian" edition featured Massey's achievement but the fiftieth edition neglected to mention this fact