EL OBSERVATORIO PRO-AM

Amateur astronomy of the Solar System is living a golden age with major contributions to modern planetary science. These contributions cover a wide spectrum of topics that range from the discovery of impacts in Jupiter [1-2], to the observation of stellar occultations by minor bodies [3-4], the characterization of unexpected high-atmospheric events in Mars [5], or the characterization of giant storms on Jupiter [6] and Saturn [7-8]. Besides these examples of high-profile publications, there is an increasing number of amateur contributions to dozens of studies of planetary atmospheres and countless contributions to the study of minor bodies. While we focus here in the role of amateur astronomy observations of planetary atmospheres, we also recognize the varied and healthy professional and amateur collaborations in other areas of solar system astronomy.The reasons behind this golden age lie in the two sides of the collaboration: On the side of amateur astronomers, many of them use very efficient detectors and advanced software tools, and they are highly connected at an international level. Thus, they provide high-quality observations on a regular basis to professional astronomers, or have strong analysis teams like the JUPOS team as an example (http://jupos.privat.t-online.de/index.htm). These frequent amateur observations provide essential monitoring of the temporal evolution of planetary atmospheres. On the other side, professional astronomers are aware of the potential of these observations and actively seek the collaboration of amateur astronomers and citizen scientists. A key case in this regard is NASA’s Juno mission to the giant planet Jupiter, and its large-scale collaboration around the JunoCam instrument on the mission Juno website: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/. The mission has been recently extended until 2025 and details of the contribution of amateur observers to this new mission scenario are presented by Orton et al. in session ODAA5 in this meeting. Other examples of professionals seeking a global collaboration with amateurs are the various professional and amateur astronomy services and workshops organized by research projects like the Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (2016-2019) and Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (2020-2024).We anticipate that the trend of amateur astronomy playing an important role in providing additional data sets to space missions will continue to grow and we advocate for the early establishment of such collaborations.  We review some of the elements that have made the collaboration of amateur astronomers with the Juno mission so fruitful for both parties and how this collaboration has grown beyond Jupiter into enhanced collaborations in other fields through networking amateur astronomers and providing a successful example to other fields.We also discuss future ground-based high-resolution amateur observations of Solar System planets in support of future missions. These include the James Webb Space Telescope observations of planets (launch in October 2021), ESA’s Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE, launching in 2022) and NASA’s Europa Clipper missions to the Jupiter system in the early 2030s, the in situ exploration of Saturn’s moon Titan by the Dragonfly mission (NASA) in 2034, the Envision mission to Venus (if selected by ESA), and possible future missions to the Icy Giants Uranus and Neptune. Each of these ambitious missions will benefit from the strong partnership between amateur and professional planetary scientists. The first in this line is the JWST observations of Giant planets to be conducted in 2022 (see Fletcher et al. in session OPS3 in this conference).Finally, we also show some professional and amateur networking elements developed under the umbrella of the Europlanet projects, including the recently launched Europlanet Telescope Network (https://bit.ly/2Br5LDt), and we present possible scenarios for future pro-am collaborations beyond the end of the Europlanet 2024 project. AcknowledgementsPart of this research has been supported by Europlanet 2024 RI. Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.

The practical occupation with astronomy has a manifold social impact. Like-minded people exchange experiences in astronomy clubs, they meet at star parties for jointly observing the sky or they take part in astronomy conventions to expand their knowledge. Some also go on astronomy vacations under dark skies at a guest observatory or in an astronomy camp. Even astronomical trips to major observatories or sun eclipses have been offered by specialized companies. The spread of astronomical information and news through the internet via newsgroups, mailing lists and chat rooms is in the meantime mandatory. Astronomical societies represent the professional and amateur astronomer´s interest on a national or international scale. Some societies fulfill important contributions for the advancement of astronomy classes in schools and to spread astronomical knowledge throughout the public. An important base for education and outreach is also formed by public observatories, planetariums and science museums. The availability of high quality instruments has led to outstanding successful observations by amateurs which in many cases has resulted in a fruitful amateur-professional partnership. Several amateur astronomers have earned a high reputation through their efforts. Some exemplary biographies will be presented shortly. The visit to astronomical observatories is well accepted by the public, one can literally speak of telescope tourism. Well known observatories, the majority of which dispose of a visitor center, are recommended as suggestion for an occasional visit.

The climate crisis is here and the time for action is ticking away. Scientific evidence has repeatedly shown that humanity alone is responsible for the destructive changes happening to our climate. Likewise, the responsibility to address and curb global warming lies with us all. As astronomers, we have a unique opportunity to educate people on the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and urge those in power to take meaningful action. Astronomers for Planet Earth is a group of current and former professional astronomers, amateur astronomers, astronomy educators, and astronomy students from over 40 countries around the world. The organisation’s goal is to 1) provide astronomers interested in climate change with a community to discuss ideas; 2) provide the public with information about the climate crisis; and 3) provide the climate movement with an astronomical perspective.

In 1833, a massive display of the Leonid Meteor Storm over America caused its population panic and wonder over these fantastic, unknown ‘fireballs’. With so many eyewitnesses, the Storm provides an interesting account of how both professional and amateur astronomers at this time sought to communicate this phenomenon through language. All of these observers specifically utilize metaphorical language, which ultimately proves most viable in bridging the observational scientific characteristics of the event with the deep, emotional awe it inspires.

The International Year of Astronomy 2009, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first look at the night sky through a telescope, was arguably the most successful public-outreach event in the history of science. Thousands of professional and amateur astronomers, public-information officers, writers, publishers, teachers, and informal educators from 148 countries worked tirelessly to share the wonders of astronomy with millions of people, from rural schoolchildren to the President of the United States. How to build on IYA2009 was the theme of “Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2010,” a conference held in Cape Town, South Africa, in March 2010. I report some of the highlights from CAP2010 and consider the extent to which the IYA2009 helped us address global challenges in astronomy communication.

Utility of 3D Surface Laser Scanning in Brachytherapy of Lip Cancer

ABSTRACTThe Amateur Sky Survey (TASS) is a loose confederation of amateur and professional astronomers. We describe the design and construction of our Mark III system, a set of wide‐field drift‐scan CCD cameras which monitor the celestial equator down to 13th magnitude in several passbands. We explain the methods by which images are gathered, processed, and reduced into lists of stellar positions and magnitudes. Over the period 1996 October to 1998 November, we compiled a large database of photometric measurements. One of our results is the tenxcat catalog, which contains measurements on the standard Johnson‐Cousins system for 367,241 stars; it contains links to the light curves of these stars as well.

The capability to caracterize small bodies by stellar occultations has expanded enormously thanks to the Gaia mission, whose accurate astrometry has improved by order of magnitude the accuracy of star positions and proper motions, and asteroid orbits. More and more occultations by minor planets as small as 5-10~km in the Main Belt are reported by observers often equipped with mobile telescopes of modest size. Appropriate techniques to recover the absolute timing of the observed events and software tools that are now widely available permit to recover asteroid astrometry (relative to the star positions) with accuracies comparable to Gaia, especially at the smallest asteroid sizes.After some successful observations of occultations by Near Earth Asteroids such as Phaethon and Apophis, we took the challenge to push the limit at smaller sub-km NEAs. Several months before the impact by the DART probe on Dimorphos, satellite of (65803) Didymos, we established a networking activity of collaboration among amateur and professional astronomers, named ACROSS (Asteroid Collaborative Research via Occultation Systematic Survey), initially supported by the European Space Agency.One of the primary goals of ACROSS is to obtain very accurate astrometry over a few years, in order to evaluate the effect of the (September 2022) DART impact on the heliocentric orbit of Didymos. However, just a few months before the DART arrival to the target the uncertainty in the ephemeris was more than an order of magnitude larger than the size of Didymos, making predictions and telescope deployment practically not feasible.After a long work of astrometric reduction of available CCD images collected during the DART/Hera ground-based campaign (fully exploited for photometry but not for astrometry) and careful weighting of the observations, we were able to gradually converge to an exploitable orbit accuracy very close to the date of the impact. Following several failed attempts, the first successful event was observed just after the DART impact.This positive detection was followed by several others (19 in total), over 6 months, providing an astrometric accuracy comparable to the DART telemetry. At the end of the campaign astrometry by occultations was able to constrain the orbit at the same level as the use of the DART telemetry.However, the success of the observations was also enhanced by the detection in 4 events of occultations by the satellite Dimorphos. While their contribution to our knowledge about the position of Dimorphos along its orbit is not major at this stage, we found that the occultation signal, modulated by diffraction effects, can provide relevant information about its size and shape.The new ongoing campaign of stellar occultation in 2024 can thus provide an important contribution not only to constraint the dynamical properties of the Didymos system, but also to understand the post-impact properties of Dimorphos, before the arrival of Hera, including its shape. A first occultation in May 2024 proved the high quality of the orbit, resulting in the first positive of the new sequence. In this talk, we will discuss the results obtained in 2023 and present some preliminary results from the ongoing 2024 campaign.

Meetings can be the bane of a working life – but they can also be its lifeblood. The latter are the ones where you meet up with old colleagues and find new ones, where a chance remark starts off a new train of thought, or where you find a useful new tool, method or whole discipline. All these types of meetings feature in this issue, from the small groups of amateur and professional astronomers, through a focused discussion meeting of deep Earth specialists, to the major international meeting that was the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire – notable for the buzz of enthusiasm running through the week. There’s a common thread to these groupings. They all involve specialists getting together and learning more. Whether it is amateur and professional observers working together to their mutual benefit, or mineral physicists, chemists and seismologists using different tools to understand the same obscure place, they share a purpose, and that’s to understand more about the natural world. The best way forward is generally agreed to be specialist working with specialist – the future is multidisciplinary. And if Science Minister Lord Drayson is to be believed, this is also a way to succeed in gaining research funding from an increasingly hard-up government and ultraefficient research councils. So it was indeed a coup to have the Minister speak at the EWASS meeting, and spend a surprising amount of time looking round at one of the most exciting, enjoyable and effective meetings this year. I just hope he noticed. Editorial NEws

Cometography is a multi-volume catalog of every comet observed throughout history. It uses the most reliable orbits known to determine the distances from the Earth and Sun at the time a comet was discovered and last observed, as well as the largest and smallest angular distance to the Sun, most northerly and southerly declination, closest distance to the Earth, and other details to enable the reader to understand the physical appearance of each well-observed comet. Volume 4 provides a complete discussion of each comet seen from 1933 to 1959. It includes physical descriptions made throughout each comet's apparition. The comets are listed in chronological order, and each listing includes complete references to publications relating to the comet. This book is the most complete and comprehensive collection of comet data available, and provides amateur and professional astronomers, and historians of science, with a definitive reference on comets through the ages.

SKY online: Linking amateur and professional astronomers on the world wide web

Planetary nebulae represent a late evolutionary phase of low‐ to intermediate‐mass stars. In this article, we present the serendipitous discovery of a previously unknown, faint potential Galactic planetary nebula (PN) in the constellation Camelopardalis, identified during a survey‐inspection, aiming at the detection of dwarf companions of the spiral galaxy NGC 2403. Narrow‐band imaging and spectroscopic observations of the nebula and its potential central star were obtained using a combination of amateur and professional telescopes. Our observations revealed a compact, dense, triangular structure—hereafter referred to as the Triangle Nebula—embedded within a broader elliptical region, which we call the Cam Nebula. Both are enclosed by an even fainter, nearly circular outer shell detectable only in deep, long‐exposure images. This Shell Nebula and the Cam Nebula may be superpositions by chance, but we will assume they are connected. We designate the entire complex as TBG‐N1. This is the first TBG nebula to avoid confusion with previously discovered TBG‐DWs (dwarf galaxies). A candidate for the central star was identified near the geometric centre of the outer shell. Spectroscopic analysis provided estimates of the nebular electron temperature and density. The combined evidence from imaging, spectroscopy, and the photometric properties of the central star candidate supports the classification of TBG‐N1 as a planetary nebula located at a distance of approximately 1 kpc. This discovery highlights the important role that collaborations between amateur and professional astronomers can play in uncovering and characterizing previously unrecognized celestial objects.

Chapter 8 - Amateur Astronomy: Engaging the Public in Astronomy Through Exploration, Outreach, and Research

As the telecommunication networks are expanding with a large number of applications that require a flexible location, the use of outdoor enclosures is growing rapidly. These enclosures are often designed to meet specifications covering a wide range as regards applications, ambient conditions and also internal heat load. Many times, the main focus in the design process is to meet the application requirements, while external factors come second. To get large-scale economy for network roll out projects, the outdoor enclosure has standardized size and features. While this approach reduces the number of variants, it causes inflexibility for the service provider. The advantage is lower investment costs through high-volume production and lower maintenance costs through uniformity. The drawbacks are obvious, long lead-time for design, early commitment for a specific technical solution, few degrees of freedom of choice, small or no possibility to change size or footprint from a user point of view. If the operator needs more equipment on the site, the only way to meet that is by additional equipment enclosures. The issues of cost and lead time for roll out of customer specific, tailor made, outdoor enclosure plays a central part in the present work - a flexible cost-efficient and low environmental-impact approach for protection of outdoor located electronic equipment enclosures. In a perfect world, the enclosure design allows the operator to choose outdoor enclosure size and features depending on application and site requirements. The site should be tailor made without extra costs for flexibility. This requires an enclosure building practice with a dimensional flexibility but also flexibility to deploy backup systems, thermal control and other auxiliary equipment on the site. Once you, as a power system supplier, have accepted these requirements, you also have to meet short lead-time for customer evaluation prototypes and serial production units, all at a competitive pricing, while the system must meet the customer's expectation regarding reliability and durability. The complete customer solution, including size-flexible enclosure, the right dc power system, control, backup and thermal system must be easily configured according to customer requirements. In this building practice, that configuration will automatically result in a production BOM, without passing through the engineering department, and so we will save time

Avery‐Hardoll automatic bottom loading equipment has been in widespread use for loading road tankers and aircraft refuellers during recent years. Now a new Avery‐Hardoll system, known as jet automatic bottom loading, has been introduced to give even greater simplicity and lower costs.