Amateur Astronomers facts

While investigating facts about Amateur Astronomers, I found out little known, but curios details like:

In 1953, an amateur astronomer saw and photographed a bright white light on the lunar surface. He believed it was a rare asteroid impact, but professional astronomers dismissed and disputed "Stuart's Event" for 50 years. In 2003, NASA looked for and found the crater.

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A group of amateur astronomers track down goverment spy satellites and publish the information, which is supposed to be classified.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 14 of the best facts about Amateur Astronomers I managed to collect.

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1. Fifteen years ago, an amateur astronomer discovered an asteroid that turned out to be part of an Apollo rocket that disappeared 30 years earlier.

2. The Apollo 10 lunar module was jettisoned and is currently in orbit around the sun. It's exact location is unknown but a group of amateur astronomers have been looking for it since 2011.

3. An amateur astronomer was able to take detailed pictures of a secret military KH-12 spy satellite in orbit - from his backyard

4. Johnny Carson went 10-0 in amateur boxing while in the Navy, minored in Physics and was an amateur astronomer.

5. Reflected light from Jupiter (apparent magnitude -2.94) is bright enough to cast a shadow. A young Canadian amateur astronomer even made a "Jupiterdial."

6. There are several periodic meteor showers that astronomers and amateur observers look for every year, for example the Perseid meteor showers with more than 60 meteors per minute and is widely watched each year in August. The earliest record known of the Perseids meteor shower is found in Chinese annals from 36 AD. It is associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle which takes 133 years to orbit the Sun.

7. The actual moment that the solstice occurs cannot be observed by amateurs because the sun moves so slowly that astronomical data tracking must be used to pinpoint the actual moment of the solstice.

8. The Dobsonian telescope design is revolutionary due to the sheer size it made available to amateur astronomers. Whereas the amateur astronomer of the 1970s, 1980s did not explore much beyond the Messier, the amateur astronomer today can observe deep objects that only professional astronomers saw

9. Haleakala National Park is popular with amateur astronomers who are able to rent telescopes and binoculars from shop keepers in the area.

10. An "amateur astronomer" (a 47yr old Canadian engineer) successfully located a satellite that NASA lost contact with 12 years ago.

What is true about amateur astronomers?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

An amateur British astronomer who spent 800 hours over six years scanning the sky with binoculars from a deck chair in his back garden discovered a new exploding star in the constellation Delphinus. The star was named Nova Alcock for the discoverer, George Alcock, a school teacher.

In 2002 an amateur astronomer discovered a portion of one of the Apollo 12 Saturn V rockets, which was believed to have been launched into the sun, had come back and fallen into an unstable orbit with the Earth. - source