robin_astro wrote:
Does anyone know who the astrophotographer is in this image?
http://sabbe.fragzone.se/KPO/domes.htm

Robin

I do not know who you are Sir but for once you have correctly
identified what most people here are - astrophotographers.

The exquisite astronomical heliocentric insights and their refinements
such as Kepler's and Roemer's never required a telescope for the
working principles are strictly intutive when it comes to cosmological
motion and structure.Telescopes are a much later invention and enter
astronomy long after the great heliocentric insights emerged (apart
from Roemer's insight ).

uk.sci.astrophotography is a better name for this forum and those who
participate in basing images on a calendrically driven clockwork
celestial sphere and it is certainly a good pursuit.It is not and never
can be astronomy,amateur or otherwise with the working principles it
adheres to for while astrophotographers can graduate to astronomical
working principles making themselves astronomers,astrophotographers are
not astronomers.

The search to find a living astronomer who has the feel for
astronomical methods and insights,such as basic Copernican
heliocentricity,has now reached ridiculous proportions.Not one person
can judge where Newton's misread plotted data and mangled astronomical
methods and principles even when time lapse fottage of the foraward
motion of the Earth overtaking the slower forward motion of the outer
planets makes understanding the Copernican reasoning easy -

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...2000_tezel.gif

The response of the astrophotographers and those who are not genuine
astronomers is that there is nothing wrong with Newton's view -

"For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes
stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are
always seen direct.." NEWTON

If you have to defend Newton's error than this is how you know you are
not and never can be an astronomer.Again,thanks for accurately
assigning the correct name to your telescopic exercise and perhaps
others will eventually appreceate the difference between astronomers
and astrophotographers without prejudice.