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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Other Amateurs Who Made Their Mark

Mr Anthony Wesley is the latest in a long line of amateur astronomers who have shown the professionals a thing or two. In 1925, Mr Clyde Tombaugh made very detailed drawings of Jupiter and Mars and sent them to the Lowell Observatory. He was offered a job as a junior astronomer and discovered Pluto 10 months later.

In the mid-1970s, American Stephen James O'Meara saw what looked like spokes on the rings of Saturn. He was unable to get his drawings published, as most astronomers believed them to be optical illusions. In 1979, Voyager 1's photographs proved him right.

Mr David Levy has discovered 22 comets. In March 1993, with his friends Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker, they discovered the Levy-Shoemaker 9 comet orbiting Jupiter. On July 23, 1995, Mr Thomas Bopp, a warehouse worker, was observing the Arizona night sky as was a professional astronomer, Mr Alan Hale, when he spotted a faint, fuzzy object. The comet was subsequently named Hale-Bopp. The Guardian

From TODAY, World – Thursday, 23-Jul-2009

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