Amateur X-ray Astronomy
Main article: Amateur X-ray astronomyCollectively, amateur astronomers observe a variety of celestial objects and phenomena sometimes with equipment that they build themselves. The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is the home of the US's only undergraduate satellite program, and has and continues to develop the FalconLaunch sounding rockets. In addition to any direct amateur efforts to put X-ray astronomy payloads into space, there are opportunities that allow student-developed experimental payloads to be put on board commercial sounding rockets as a free-of-charge ride.
There are major limitations to amateurs observing and reporting experiments in X-ray astronomy: the cost of building an amateur rocket or balloon to place a detector high enough and the cost of appropriate parts to build a suitable X-ray detector.
Read more about this topic: X-ray Astronomy
Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or astronomy:
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifference to death.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)