Rev Bob on Catalyst

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

I just finished watching it. That was excellent!
A good insight to an extraordinary fellow.

[Galactic G (Greg)]

I agree. A pretty amazing guy, with a pretty amazing memory of the night sky. 42 super nova's under his belt....wow!

[Galactic G (Greg)]

Oh...and I'd love to know who made Rev. Bob's 16" telescope in the early 80's?

[Wavytone]

I was always certain even in the 1980's that he had divine guidance

[Ric]

It was a delightfull surprise to see that segment announced at the start.

What an amazing chap to be able to view 500+ galaxies in a night and know what is what and where all from memory. By comparison I'm lucky if I can get 25 in a night and that's using a CCD camera.

I'm not even close to this gentlemans weight division.

[h0ughy (David)]

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2351795.htm for the transcript, the video podcast will be ready to download sometime in the morning

[RB (Andrew)]

An amazing Gentleman indeed, I'll have to catch the podcast.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Thanks for the link Dave.

[h0ughy (David)]

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/geo/c..._2008_ep29.wmv

carefull its a 89 meg download

[iceman (Mike)]

Can't wait to hear him speak at IISAC2008!

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Can't wait to hear him speak at IISAC2008!

Oh how I would love to be there .........

[rogerg (Roger)]

ahh, I missed it. Was watching BSG on 10HD ... must download the vodcast of catalyst when the episode becomes available.

[Satchmo]

Originally Posted by Galactic G

Oh...and I'd love to know who made Rev. Bob's 16" telescope in the early 80's?

(This is to the best of my memory from email communications with him)

It was a Meade Starfinder 16" equatorial. I believe he later had the mirror refigured in the USA. The original tube is now on a Dob mount.

The smaller of his scopes, and the one he is peering through outdoors in the Catalyst story has a 12" F4.8 mirror I made back in 1987. He used it mainly in the years where location limited him mainly to a balcomy for searching. I think he made 6 discoveries with that one.

Bob also has use of a 30" F4.5 Starsplitter dobsonian bought with a government grant , located at Linden , but I believe the scope has been problematic opto-mechanically and they could never build a roll-off shelter for it due to zoning regulations.

[Tandum (Robin)]

Replayed on ABC2 this arvo ... I'm impressed...

[theodog (Jeff)]

Missed it myself, but my physics students told me all about it.
They were enthusiastic about Rev. Bob and what he has achieved.
Good to see younger generation showing an interest.
Well done Catalyst and Rev. Bob Evans.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,

What an inspiring story. Last night our astronomy group met and all had seen the Catalyst feature on Rev Bob.

Rev Bob elevates amateur astronomy to another level, surely his story will result in more of our young and not so young becoming involved.

I am sure most of the IIS members would have been aware of Bob Evans contribution to science and astronomy, but most of the community at large would never have heard of him until now with Catalyst.

It is a great example of what dedication and such attention to detail can achieve, a level we can all try to aspire to.

Congratulations Rev Robert Evans, you are a legend.

Regards
Trevor

[Satchmo]

What wasn't touched on in the piece, was that most of his discoveries were made in the era before automated CCD sky surveys really took off. These days the vast majority of supernovae are discovered that way and generally earlier, and Bob's contribution is one more example of an available field of amateur science that isn't the frontier it once was.

Neverthless I think Bob put in hundreds of hours of visual searching to bag each discovery, often surveying 1000 galaxies a night having memorised the location of 10's of 1000's of field stars. It is certainly an icredible human feat reminiscent of the tenacity of great amateur astronomers such as John and William Herschel.

[MrB (Simon)]

Satchmo - I think there was mention early in the story that the majority of discoveries were visual/non photographic.
Can't remember exactly but I think they said 42 visual, 9 photographic?... or something like that...

BTW... How many dob's does one man need?!
I think I saw 5 or 6 of them in his shed! hehe