Re: [ATM] the future of amateur telescope making and amateur astronomy

["Bengt Rosengren" <bengt.rosengren@citadellet.landskrona.se>]

I have been a silent member of this list for more than 10 years. It has been
very rewarding indeed, and I take this opportunity to say "Thank you very
much, all you contributors!"

To think of the future of ATM is fascinating. But there also is a serious
side of it.

In my part of the world, northwestern Europe, it is quite obvious that the
changing climate means many more cloudy days and nights during september to
april. During the summer we have as many clear nights as usual, but here the
sky is too bright for deep sky observing at least.

Well, shall we mothball our telescopes and stop building new ones?

Hell, no!

The optical window to the Universe is only a narrow one. 

There is electromagnetic radiation all the way from gamma rays to extremely
long wave radio. The clouds and the water vapour in our atmosphere only
blocks small portions of this enormous spectrum. Also, a large number of
cosmic particles are hitting our planet.

So the answer is obvious: Let us ATM:ers build telescopes for all the other
wavelengths, along with further developing the optical telescopes. 

Most of those wavelengths are accessible 24/7, not only during the hopefully
clear night hours.

I have drawn my own conclusions, and am now running several projects in
parallell:

1. I have built a small radio telescope, tuned to 21 cm. Modern receivers
are extremely powerful and sensitive. You can measure bolometric all
incident radiation, or split in thousands of channels to look for ET.

2. As 1, but with an ordinary microwave head. Solar observations etc.

3. I have purcased a "Radio Jove" kit, to observe the radio waves emanating
from Jupiter.

4. I am building the "Muon detector" from Scientific American. With two
detectors you have something like an interferometer.

5. I have built a large number of sensitive magnetometers (partly from
instructions in Sci.Am.).

Other ideas are:

6. The gamma ray telescope in Namibia detects optical phenomena from
incoming gamma rays. Our sensitive CCD-cameras could do the same.

7. There are several radio astronomy projects, utilizing longer wavelengths.
Radio-ATM:ers wake up!

8. I am going to build a 100 meter long laser-aligned pipe, filled with
destilled water and photon detectors, buried underground. Maybe some
neutrino will show up?

This is what is going on May 8, 2007.

What is going on the same date 2017?

Best regards,
Bengt Rosengren


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Bengt Rosengren
M.Sc. Engineering, M.Sc. Astronomy
Landskrona, SWEDEN
Phone+Fax:  +46 418 199 46   Mobile:  070 - 713 30 32
Email:  bengt.rosengren@citadellet.landskrona.se
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-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: atm-bounces@atmlist.net [mailto:atm-bounces@atmlist.net] För Mel
Bartels
Skickat: den 8 maj 2007 03:59
Till: 'ATM List'
Ämne: [ATM] the future of amateur telescope making and amateur astronomy

What do you think the future of telescope making and amateur astronomy will
be like?

I'm giving a presentation this summer at ALCON07 and wish very much to
supplant my ideas with yours.

Mel Bartels


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