Amateur Astronomers and the Hubble Space Telescope

摘要

While the history of space telescopes goes back to the early days of the space age, it entered a new phase in 1990 with the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Like their professional counterparts, amateur astronomers have been interested in observing from space, and they got their first chance when the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Riccardo Giacconi, offered observing time on HST to amateurs in 1986. Twelve observing projects from amateurs got time on HST from 1992 to 1997. This article examines the history of this unique initiative and the reasons it came to an end. Amateur astronomers have since been able to access HST observations online from the archive of Hubble observations, part of a growing trend to astronomical research using archival resources.