Edwin Hubble was a genius, but like so many geniuses of the last century, he was relatively unknown until his name was put on the Hubble Space Telescope. The fact that the Hubble telescope didn’t work was not the astronomer Hubble’s fault, he had nothing to do with it. But I think the professional astronomer Hubble would have agreed with my amateur astronomer Father-in-law, any number of amateur astronomers would have loved testing the Hubble telescope before it was launched. The problem could have been found for free and fixed without any worries about working in space.
Visiting the occasional observatory I have been generally disappointed by the experience. Since these visits take place during the day the most you can hope for is to see someone observing the Sun, as they do at Kitt Peak Observatory. No one was looking at the Sun the day we visited. I had these silly ideas of seeing the giant mirrors or looking through the eyepiece, I don’t even know if there is an eyepiece anymore.
My Father-in-law enjoyed his visits though, of course he knew what he was looking at.
Observatories are fun places to visit, but most of them are a bit out of the way. Kitt Peak is in Arizona and on top of small mountain. While touring the grounds we noticed a lot of benches places pretty close together. This seemed kind of funny, until we talked a little ways in the thin air and needed to sit down.
The technologies have improved a good deal on the home telescope front since astronomer Hubble’s time, with Celestron being the name to look for. It is possible to see all kinds of heavenly bodies with a home telescope, though none of them will look as amazing as the images you can find with a quick Google image search for Hubble.
There are a lot of toys to be found on the telescope front. There are also groups that like to meet on dark nights and see if they find a nebula or a galaxy or a comet. Amateur astronomers are still discovering new and interesting things, like a recent observation of a comet that suddenly brightened for no known reason. Many of these amateurs make their own telescopes by the tried and true method of grinding glass and polishing it to an exact curvature. If you have a spare half a million dollars laying around, just tack a home observatory onto your house and gaze at the star from the comfort of home.
Amateur astronomers, doing what they love and making news at the same time. I’m sure that the immortal astronomer Hubble would approve.
