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Making Amateur Astronomy Accessible
The skies in London are awful. Probably worse than awful.
New York City and Las Vegas are the only places I’ve seen that stand any
chance of taking London’s crown of being the most light polluted city in
the world and less suited to astronomy.
Except astronomy is available and available to enjoy for anyone, wherever
they live or work.
I hope this article inspires you to ignore the web-chatter and magazine articles that will tell you that you need to seek out light pollution-free skies,
far from free roaming photons of artificial light that will wreak havoc with
your ability to pick out faint galaxies, if you’re to enjoy real amateur astronomy. Firstly there is no such thing as real amateur astronomy; but there
are pedants who think that you have to do things the way they learned,
and want to keep it that way. Let me dispel a few myths. Recite after me:
goto is good, star hopping is optional.
Secondly, amateur astronomy is a very wide spectrum from the naked
eye International Space Station watchers at one end, to radio astronomy
Astro Nerds June 2014
Astro Nerds June 2014