Real Astronomy is Naked

A replica of Herschel’s scope raises the question: Is it only naked-eye astronomy that’s real?

You can insert your own joke about being able to see Uranus.

Sky at Night Magazine have put up a question on their twitter account:

A reader says remote observing, with online scopes, is real astronomy as you control everything, even though you’re not there. Do you agree?

It’s something astronomers do from time to time, point at others and claim that’s not real astronomy. I remember, when CCDs were starting to be adopted for astrophotos, old hands would disparage their digitally enhanced neighbours. For some reason a chemical process prone to noise and mistakes in a hobby photo lab was more real that non-destructive manipulation of digital data. It begs the question what do you think is real?

If there is a divide, it’s between naked eye astronomy and everything else rather than between one telescope use and another. Otherwise the line is pretty arbitrary. Are you only a real astronomer if you polish your own mirrors and grind your own lenses? Is it the length of cable between your telescope and computer? I’ll accept that observing via Slooh and your own telescope is different, but it’s no less real. After all there isn’t a professional astronomer actually in the Hubble telescope with his fingers on the focus, yet that doesn’t stop academics being real astronomers.

It depends on what it is you want to acheive when you’re doing astronomy. If you want to make discoveries, which seems pretty real to me, then technological aids help. If that’s an aid on the other side of the world, or downloading information from ESA, then so be it. If you want to practice astronomy in the way that most observers of the sky have, then it’s naked eyes that you need. In some ways you could even say it’s more real. Astronomy, as far as the naming of the stars went, was done by the naked eye. It’s only with a wide view that the patterns of the constellations can be seen. Despite that using more than your eyes is can augment what we see rather than rob of us of it. Remote scopes offer a chance anyone to visit a dark sky site and see more of the universe on any given night regardless of family commitments or health issues.

I’m not sure why you’d want to draw a line though. Astronomy, like a lot of things, is more interesting when you can use it as a base to explore from, rather than a box to be confined in.