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Lat/Long and timekeeping system for Mars
On Sat, 08 Dec 2018 18:48:12 -0500, Davoud wrote:
Paul Schlyter: It's an interesting fact that modern professional astronomers rarely know the constellations. They don't need to since they just dial in the coordinates of the object they want to observe with their big GOTO telescopes. Or they may not even observe themselves, professional observers observe for them. That's rational for optimizing the use of available observing time of course, but it certainly make you lose contact with the skies. Right. But contact with the skies is a luxury that amateurs can enjoy. The professional has work to do. Except that in my club we have a number of professionals who are also amateur astronomers (STSCI, APL, Goddard are all nearby). For the most part they don't get anywhere near a telescope in the professional lives, but they do commune with the skies at our star parties. It's like if a professional geographer didn't know where Switzerland or China or USA were situated without looking them up on a map, and if he wanted to go there, he just dialed in the geographical coordinates on the GPS of his self-driving car or self-flying plane and then let it take him there. According to a friend of mine who is a military pilot, what the traveling geographer really does in the modern era is board a commercial flight where a trained pilot dials in the geographical coordinates on the GPS of his (largely) self-flying airliner and let it take him where he wants to go. Barring a Lion Air-type incident, that is. That's why air travel sometimes is considered to not be "real travel". If you travel on the surface instead, you get to see much more of the area you travel through. But of course surface travel takes much more time, and that's time today's rushed people think they don't have. |
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