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Re: chart problems (was: More and more and more .) > Of course, adding this to the list of "qualifications" for accredited chart > makers narrows the list of potential candidates to a select few, who are > probably professional astronomers that would have little or no interest in > such a job. That is why much of this work has fallen to dedicated amateurs. Not all jobs must be done by a single person. Even if the actual chart makers are dedicated amateurs, some professionals may be able to provide useful information before undertaking the actual chart-making job. A public forum like this has greatly contributed to such kind of jobs, especially when the objects are entirely new (such as novae). We can see a good example of "how the best sequence was adopted for SN 1993J" in the vsnet-history backlog. Many professional astronomers contributed to better qualify the sequence. http://vsnet.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/Mail/vsnet-history/maillist.html A closed community with a limited devoted chart makers would not have performed this degree of comprehensive research. It may be a surprise that such a full-featured work, based on an electronic community, was already established more than 10 years ago, and the result was immediately reflected on subsequent observations as well as refining the previous observations. The same was true for the following novae at that epoch. I don't find any reason to doubt if such a cooperation is still feasibile in the modern times, unless there is an unrewarded effort to turn back the clock by some decades. > (I've always thought the charts for visual use should be made and checked by > experienced visual observers, which would eliminate most professional > astronomers too.) I have experienced the both. When I first looked at the CCD images, I was surprised to see how useless our familiar visual charts were for CCD observing. This was probably a result of different limiting magnitudes, and we can expect that the same thing would happen between different apertures and magnifications (or even degree of experience) even in the same visual observing. Regards, Taichi Kato
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