What makes an astronomer a professional, and what makes them an amateur?
It used to be simple; a professional has a degree, and is paid to do it, while an amateur doesn’t, and isn’t. But that’s way too simplistic these days. Many people who are technically amateurs have equipment that is absolutely killer, know their stuff more than many pros, and do real science.
Fraser Cain from UniverseToday.com has written an online feature for Wired Magazine showing some of these amateurs and their equipment. I see a lot of familiar names and a few familiar faces there too; these guys take images that you would not only be proud to hang on your wall, but some folks would pay good money for the chance. Check out the images in the article; I bet more than one will wind up as someone’s background.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I believe that if your income is at least 60% of yearly income, you are considered a “professional.” But who knows anymore. “Back in the day” when I was going to school for photography that was the rule. heh, of course, the years after school to when I got my business going I guess I could have called myself a “professional retail clerk.”
August 10th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I dont think this transferes across fields very well, I am a geologist, but i work in a technical position, professional geologist are actually titled such, having worked in the geology for a number of years, and passing a state level test, and being registered as a Professional Geologist, even though 100% of my income is from geology, it would be quite a faux pas for me to call myself a professional geologist
…. makes me wonder what PZ thinks of back yard biologist…..
August 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
It’s not only images: There are amateur spectroscopists in Germany and France who work with professionals to provide them with long-term overall data of their objects, while the pro’s then do detailed snap-shots. Putting all things together you can get results that would not have been possible without the amateurs. A Brazilian guy, S. Otero, has trained himself on plain eye photometry techniques, as described by the “old folks” before astrophotography became a tool. He reaches about 0.05 magnitude accuracy, confirmed by independant professional photometry. No one would have believed that before. I wholeheartedly agree: I’m a pro at an 8-m observatory, but among papers with my name you’ll find some that are co-authored by amateurs with 20 to 40cm main-mirrors.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
If you do astronomy with a telescope you own yourself, you’re probably an amateur. If you do it with a telescope owned by a government or a foundation, and wish you earned enough to be able to buy your own telescope, you’re probably a professional!
August 10th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Wow, that’s amazing. I didn’t know you could get that kind of imagery w/o being at a largely established observatory of some kind. A very inspiring article. Now if I could only come up the $50,000+ that these guys are spending on their rigs…
August 10th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
[...] (more…) [...]
August 10th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
There are ways to do this without spending $50,000+. Lots of local astronomy clubs run their own observatories and you can join them for very reasonable rates. Club members get to use the observatory. I will point to the Racine Astronomical Society (http://users.wi.net/~rasastro/) as one such club. They have a 16 inch and a 14 inch Celestron. With a membership and a little training from their members, you can have access to them for under $50 a year. One member specializes in Mars imaging and has contributed images of Mars to research programs and books.
So check out your local astronomy clubs. You might be able to get access to a great instrument at a bargain price.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Thanks for the tip Hale.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
So far as I can tell, professionals are people paid to do something, and amateurs are those who do something without receiving compensation for their efforts. The assumption seems to be that a professional will tend to do a better job than an amateur, because a professional is relying upon the quality of their work to feed themselves. However, this is just a rule of thumb. Amateurs can and often do produce work that is either as good or better than what some professionals in their field produce.
When you tell someone that something is professional level work, you are telling them that it is good enough that someone else would pay for it. The use of the words, “professional,” and, “amateur,” to describe the relative quality of something is something of a misappropriation of the terms. Often, “amateur,” is used to indicate inferior quality, and, “professional,” is used to indicate superior quality, which ignores the broader meanings of both words. Rather than using the word, “professional,” to describe all good work, or using, “amateur,” to describe all inferior work, it would be more useful to stop using the terms to describe the relative quality of the work and instead just say that work is either superior or inferior. The problem doesn’t seem to be that some amateurs are doing work that is as good as professionals in their field, it seems to be that the usage of the words, “professional,” and, “amateur,” is incorrect.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
DrKC, one of the fun things about paleontology is that it is very amateur heavy. There aren’t very many job openings but if you go to any show or fair where there is a paleontology type exhibit you always find very knowledgable people who have found some pretty neat stuff.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
A word to the wise: Don’t spend this kind of money on astronomy gear if you live in Seattle!
August 10th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I used some results from data collected by “amateurs” for my Ph.D. thesis. Joe Patterson at Columbia University runs the “Center for Backyard Astronomy” (or is it Astrophysics, I forget) and has a large group of amateurs monitoring cataclysmic variables. So many amateurs have published papers.
I know that there are supernova monitoring groups, too.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
ISTM that as long as you are paid to do something, you are a professional at that thing.
What I have a problem with is the assertion that some jobs are “professions” and others are just jobs. Of course this comes from the assumption (and not a very good one) that someone being paid to do something is better at it than someone doing it for fun. A “professional” painter is presumed to be better than an “amateur.”
So a few years ago, I read a claim that there are only three professions:
Medicine, Law, and (get this!) theology.
August 10th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
“So a few years ago, I read a claim that there are only three professions:
Medicine, Law, and (get this!) theology.” That must be quite a few years ago indeed: These (and free arts, which include astronomy, btw.) were the four classical faculties in the medieval university system.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Amateurs are astronomers, professionals are astrophysicists.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Being a musician, and having played in a lot of bands for many years, I can say that I’ve been caught up in the argument between what is considered pro and not-pro more times than I can count. We used to figure that if you got paid then that made you a pro. Of course it didn’t seem to matter if you actually made more money at your day job!
August 10th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Okay:
Question 1: If a professional astronomer is looking at the sky in their offtime using their own equipment, are they an amateur?
Question 2: What if not being paid but volenteering?
Question 3: What constitutes the degree which makes one a professional astronomer? Must it be a PhD? What if someone has a masters in astronomy, a bachelors in cosmology and a minor in optical physics? Is that good enough?
Question 4: Does it need to be in astronomy? What if one has a degree in astro physics? Could they be a professional astronomer? What if it’s in optical physics? or nuclear chemistry with a minor in astronomy?
Question 5: What if you have a guy who has a PhD in planetary geology and a masters in astrophysics and who is independantly wealthy and builds his own observatory with his (or her) own money and does his/her own work there pro-bono but in the process discovers many things?
Question 6: What if the degree is honary and the person is infact self educated but has won the nobel prize?
Question 7: How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
Question 8: What if professional persons working in a professional persuit, such as satellite communications, discover something amazing in the field of astronomy, such as the background radiation from the big bang. Would they be professional astronomers?
Question 9: Have I irritated you yet with my splitting of hairs and answering roundabout question?
Question 10: If I pay my friend five bucks to clean my telescope is he then a professional astronomer?
August 10th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
[...] from Bad Astronomy Blog. Dang! I wish I had stumbled across that guy years [...]
August 10th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
On the amateurs-with-no-money side of things, there’s a lot of good research to be done on X-ray sources, and not only is the data freely available from HEASARC, the analysis can be done on the web running software on NASA’s hardware. The data is small by today’s standards, and can readily be analyzed with open-source tools (e.g., scipy and pyfits).
I guess X-ray data doesn’t have the glamour of optical, though — much of it is timing or flux data, which don’t lend themselves well to images, many of the sources are unresolved and so look like splodges, and there are so few photons that even good images look noisy — but really, you’re looking at some of the most cataclysmic processes in the universe.
For a specific question to attack, I’d look at the ROSAT all-sky survey Bright Source Catalog. Many of the sources are still unclassified, but (for example) pretty much any point in the sky was regularly observed by the BeppoSAX WFC between 1996 and 2002, so there are plenty of archival observations one could check for variability, combine to obtain a spectrum, search for periodic emission…
All this does require a fair bit of knowledge, from the likely types of X-ray sources to Fourier transforms and Poisson statistics, but amateurs are perfectly capable of learning all this, much of it from textbooks in the public library (or last year’s edition from a used bookstore near a university) or on the web.
It still doesn’t have the glamour and tactility of building a telescope and taking pictures with it, I admit.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:46 am
It’s actually still quite simple, though it’s not formal. It’s sort of a club. Astronomy is a small science, researchers know each other. If the others consider you a member of this “astronomical community” you are, if not, you’re not. To be, you should be actively researching, this is publish and show up at conferences regularly. This does not require a degree or a position, but usually comes with it.
You do not need a fulltime research job to do so, but you would usually have at least some research time paid. In more than 99% of the cases this includes a PhD, as you won’t get a research-job without. The usual definition of thePhD is that it certifies your ability to do independent research in that field, so lower degree won’t do it, and if you do active research the PhD comes by itself. Most of the few exceptions are those so wealthy not needing a position, but also they will usually have had some sort of university training, typically by someone who was himself considered being a member of the community. They also occasionally will make their PhD, just because they’ll have accumulated so much research results that the remaining formal requirements will mean only minor additional effort (I’m not talking out of the blue, I know such people) To repeat myself, in the end it breaks down to “active research”, for which PhD and positions are good indicators, but not absolutely required ones.
August 11th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Question 1: If a professional astronomer is looking at the sky in their offtime using their own equipment, are they an amateur?
Do they just take pictures or do they consider the physics and chemistry of that they see, and write refereed journal articles? If you just take pictures – your an amateur.
As an aside – many, many professionals do not look at the sky on their time off – nor did they as kids – they got into astronomer from the science degree side and have never looked up (myself included). Furthermore – watching star trek or babylon 5 does not make you a professional – and many professionals (myself included) detest these shows (dr who is good tho).
Question 2: What if not being paid but volenteering?
It’s not about pay. See above.
Question 3: What constitutes the degree which makes one a professional astronomer? Must it be a PhD? What if someone has a masters in astronomy, a bachelors in cosmology and a minor in optical physics? Is that good enough?
If you want to work in a professional environment – then the job adds normally say “PhD in astronomy or related field” – you will be carrying out research in a particular astrophysical topic and so you need the knowledge to do this effectively – so physics, astrophysics etc is the area. Although I know a really good astronomy with a PhD in speech recognition which allowed him to get a job due to his pattern matching skillls.
You can also be a spanner-head and build instruments – this often requires an engineering degree.
Question 4: Does it need to be in astronomy? What if one has a degree in astro physics? Could they be a professional astronomer? What if it’s in optical physics? or nuclear chemistry with a minor in astronomy?
See above. It about what you do.
Question 5: What if you have a guy who has a PhD in planetary geology and a masters in astrophysics and who is independantly wealthy and builds his own observatory with his (or her) own money and does his/her own work there pro-bono but in the process discovers many things?
If they write their ideas up in refereed journals, then they are professionals.
Question 6: What if the degree is honary and the person is infact self educated but has won the nobel prize?
See above. For years, Fred Hoyle was not attached to any uni and wrote papers which were published in ApJ and MNRAS – no one would have said he was not a professional.
Question 7: How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
2 pieces
Question 8: What if professional persons working in a professional persuit, such as satellite communications, discover something amazing in the field of astronomy, such as the background radiation from the big bang. Would they be professional astronomers?
Did they write a journal article? Then yes.
Question 9: Have I irritated you yet with my splitting of hairs and answering roundabout question?
Not really.
Question 10: If I pay my friend five bucks to clean my telescope is he then a professional astronomer?
No.
August 11th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I would guess or hope that Rob already knew the dictionary definition of ‘professional’ when he posted his blog entry. On one level, he is simply pointing out that if image quality used to be an infallible sign of the observer’s job description, it’s not anymore. In many ways, today’s well-appointed amateur enjoys many advantages over the harried professional researcher who must book instrument time long in advance and use it for one or more technical purposes – regardless of how pretty the results look. The high-end amateur can shoot, and shoot, and shoot, and then show us their best work, with few other constraints.
Is there a deeper question, though? Although ‘professional’ may just be a matter of pay stubs, ‘professionalism’ is something more profound – a commitment to excellence and responsibility. Taking nothing away from their superb contributions, it is fact of life that most ‘astronomers’ are basically research physicists working in a branch whose raw data tends to be collected from telescopes of one kind or another. They are not necessarily, or even usually, great observers or great telescope jockeys. They book their time at Keck or CFHT or wherever, travel with their team, and conduct their observations under the watchful guidance of the professional scope operators whose full time job is to make sure the visiting geniuses get the best possible images without breaking anything.
Then they go home, do their physics, publish, rinse and repeat. The results are useful and important, and they get paid for it, but I am not sure it is ‘professional astronomy’ in the old sense.
To my very personal tastes, probably unsuitable in this day and age, a great astronomer is someone who loves observing the sky in all its many spectra, for the sake of discovering, identifying or cataloging new or old stuff. Someone who does *that* for a living is, in my book, a true professional astronomer. Someone who does it and makes a living another way is a true amateur astronomer. They’re both wonderful clubs to be in.
August 11th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
>> To my very personal tastes, probably unsuitable in this day and age, a great astronomer is someone who loves observing the sky in all its many spectra, for the sake of discovering, identifying or cataloging new or old stuff.
The act of observing soon becomes tiresome – that’s what students are for. The science comes into the data analysis, most of which is done once you get home.
August 12th, 2007 at 12:20 am
I think the whole idea of pro vs. am is a somewhat moot argument. Who cares what a person is so long as the work is done and no problems arise from it? Perhaps it is the scientific instinct that compels us to endlessly categorize but I for one prefer not to split hairs and see the scientific field reduced narrowly to only those who managed to get a sheepskin or make a living from it. To become a scientist has always been a democratic affair of simply following the scientific method.
The presence of “amateur” scientists alone provides an automatic counter-argument to the whole “cabal-of-elite-scientists-that-are-pro-global-warming” idea.
In the end, even the process of learning things for one’s self is a quite remarkable one. Imagine how many people have independently reached the same conclusions that have earned other scientists immortality simply because fate allowed them to be born earlier. Are these “amateurs’” discoveries any less astounding?
Make no mistake, I’m not accusing anyone on this page of elitism of any kind, I’m merely outlining a slight fear I have about where the debate may end.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Sorry, late to this party, but I had to chime in. Back in the late 80s I began work on the Halley Watch, analyzing images and data from the 1985-86 Halley passage. Most of the images I worked with came from amateurs from around the world. They were, in many cases, as good as or even better than some I got from the “pros” — and we were able to use that data to make a convincing case to explain the reasons for comet plasma tail disconnection events. The book I worked on, the NASA-funded atlas of large-scale comet tail phenomena, is still kicking around as one of the definitive atlases of plasma tail apparitions.
We went on to use the same Halley Watch model for the Ulysses Comet Watch, again using amateur observers’ work in our analysis. We had a world-wide network of some 200 faithful observers, and through a period of four years, we observed half a dozen comets in detail. The images these folks sent were breathtaking and amazingly useful.
The funny thing was, in the beginning, a lot of “pro” astronomers scoffed at us for using amateurs, claiming that the work would be inferior (they said amateurs wouldn’t calibrate, follow instructions, etc.). We proved ‘em wrong, and we began to see the tide change to allow more respect and use of amateurs’ work. One of my teammates laughingly used to say, “The pros got real interested when they found out there were all these good observatories out there, acres of glass, available for use.”
Available for use if one cultivated the amateurs instead of laughing at them in derision.
A few years after I got my masters’ I did a survey of pro-am relationships and was quite gratified to see how much the field had flourished. Indeed, the AAS even had a pro-am event at a meeting in North Carolina, and it was amazing to see the two sides get together to “talk shop” — it was a long time coming.
August 12th, 2007 at 10:31 am
“Make no mistake, I’m not accusing anyone on this page of elitism of any kind, I’m merely outlining a slight fear I have about where the debate may end.”
That was kind of my point. If professional means something less objective than “getting paid for it,” then sooner or later, it becomes a matter of making value judgments about what somebody does for a living.
And Rivi, it should be no surprise that there are some who have never gone beyond medieval thought.
August 12th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
[...] amateur and professional There was an interesting exchange in comments to a recent BABlog entry dealing with the differences and relationship between amateur and professional astronomers. I [...]
August 12th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
I generally consider science about the least elitist field there is. And I use this argument with a lot of the “Oh the oil companies just don’t want us to…” or the “doctors don’t want us to be well they want more money for the drug companies.”
Look: Its the results, not the person who they come from. If you, Joe Blow, self-educated, non-elite, written-off-by-all-the-pros can prove it then you got yourself all you need. If you can build a nuclear fusion reactor and make it produce energy and demonstrate; this then guess what: All the scientists with eight Ph.D’s and decades of tenure at national laboratories who said that you couldn’t do it loose. You win. Simple as that. If you can, with your backyard telescope and your written-off theory prove that the “Ivory Tower” scientists are wrong, guess what? You will be recognized.
I’m not in any way shape or form putting down education or experience, don’t get me wrong. It’s simply not that the “elitist scientists” are in charge because they got a piece of paper which let them into the “Ivory tower.” It’s simply that they get results because they tend to know what they are doing. And hence… they tend to get results. But in the end… it is the results and the proof that matters.
Do amateurs upset science? Yes, sometimes in ground breaking, revolutionary ways. It doesn’t happen often and for every one who does I can show you a thousand who didn’t. It’s rare… but it does happen. If you really think that your guru who sells you anti-magnetic-field spray and astrology charts isn’t taken seriously because he isn’t part of the university elite/ivory tower club, you might want to consider it may be because he doesn’t have anything verifiable or any actual evidence.
Okay… end of my somewhat off-topic anti-”science is elitist” babble.
August 13th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I don’t think it’s how seeriously (SIC) you are taken – by others in the field, by cliens, family, or friends. Or does it matter much what you do.
Professional vs amateur is a matter of attitude. In my estimation, that is. The professional devotes at least 50-60 percent of his waking time to his profession and its sidebars (writing blogs, for instance). In addition, he’s *serious* about it. He keeps up with the latest work in the field, and owns/uses the best equipment he can.
The amateur, on the other hand – for whatever reason – doesn’t do all of the above (though he may do one or even some). Other names for amateurs include “sunday driver”, “weekend sailor”, and ‘occasional pilot”
There is nothing in that description having anything to do with education, pay, or even the profession involved. I’m certain that there are many paid astronomers who aren’t professionals, and would imagine there are at least a few astrologers who are.
Come to think of it, I know a professional Pokemon trainer… but that’s going to change when I send Godzilla back to school in a week or so.
August 13th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
As one example, hasn’t Sir Patrick Moore always described himself as an amateur astronomer?
August 21st, 2007 at 8:48 pm
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