Edward wrote:
When I saw this thread, SJO leaped to mind. I've always thought that the
praise was artificial, some S&T hype. Who's to say the guy doesn't have a
good memory of images of the objects in question. If *you* can't see it,
its simpley proves the point. An easy game to play. Its interesting to
have someone serious convinced its real...I'll have to reconsider.

How about his correct determination of Uranus's period of rotation by
visual observation, when people were giving numbers from 12 to 24 hours?
He gave the figure of 16 hours, which was later verified by Voyager.
Seems pretty convincing to me.

Look, whether or not he is the most talented observer is not interesting
to me. I'm not sure at all that one *can* define "most talented" in any
objective fashion. Some people will be better than others at seeing some
details, but perhaps not as good at seeing others. It seems unlikely to
me that one person will be able to see all details better than anyone
else.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt