Amateur Astronomers and the Hubble Space Telescope

Abstract

In December 1985 the leaders of major amateur astronomy organizations in the U.S. met with the director and staff of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) at their invitation to discuss the possibility of organizing a program for U.S. citizens who don’t work professionally in astronomy to make use of the Hubble Space Telescope. Director Riccardo Giaconni’s previous successful experience in cooperating with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) on studies of various objects with the orbiting High Energy Astronomy Observatory prompted him to bring together representative of the AAVSO, Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO), Astronomical League (AL), International Amateur-Professional Photoelectric Photometry (IAPPP), Independent Space Research Group (ISRG), International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA), and Western Amateur Astronomers (WAA) to work out an approach to making HST observing time available to amateur astronomers, educators, and anyone else who might have a good research idea. Dr Giaconni offered to make some of his director’s discretionary time available to qualified non-professional astronomers if the representatives present would design and carry out a program to find the good research ideas and have them ready for his selection. They would then be inserted in the HST observing program once the first six months of Guaranteed Time Observations had been carried out and the regular General Observing program had begun. With this as its charge, the representatives organized themselves into the Amateur Astronomers Working Group and have prepared a procedure for the selection of non-professional researchers to use the Hubble Space Telescope.