Richard wrote:
> Wait a minute, you're talking about observing, Paul. Is that allowed on this list? ;-)
Only occasionally :)
I guess that's my segue into the split-list discussion...
Personally, I resist the tendency to categorize folks. Because I do imaging, I get tossed into the "imagers" category, which is a dirty word to some. Remember all of the group polarization at Lassen this year, where it almost turned into the imagers against everyone else just because *some* people doing imaging asked for reasonable bright-light considerations? What a mess, and in reality the accomodations asked for were of benefit to observers as well, and were what is expected at a dark-sky outing. "Us vs. Them" almost ruined a wonderful week on the mountain.
I love astronomy in all its forms. I love to build telescopes and accessories, and have made 5 scopes. I love to do observing, using paper charts and taking a long time to hunt down a faint fuzzy at the edge of detection. I love to do solar observing during the day. I love having high-power views of the planets and the moon so I can study their structure and tease out faint surface details. And I love taking good quality images of the things I observe, so I can share them with others and have hard-copy references of my own creation to see detail and color that weren't visible through the eyepiece. I certainly understand that some folks have a more narrow set of interests, and consider anything outside those interests to be "noise." I'll participate in observational astronomy-only lists, and confine my postings to be on-topic. I'll also participate in imaging lists, ATM lists, equipment lists, and others that fit my range of interests. Just don't stuff me (or anybody else) into some small, narrow cat
egory because of one thing. I'm not an imager, I'm not an observer, I'm not a GOTO guy...
I'm an amateur astronomer.
Paul
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