“ It was a little weird with me in the middle of the night, you know, in winter hours, and by waking up people when I rush with snow on my boots ”, shares Steven Hill, an astronomer “ Amateur ” from Colorado, in the United States. He collaborated researchers from the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, to show that the composition of Jupiter’s clouds does not correspond to conventional opinion.
Observations made from Backyard of the hill and later confirmed By working with a university research team Suggest that the Jupiter clouds are located too deep in its hot atmosphere to be made up of ammonia ice. Instead, they are more likely to be ammonium hydrosulfure in a smoggy mixture.
Hill loved children’s astronomy and was fascinated by space in general, taking him to study for a diploma in aerospace genius before working in “Space Business” for a while. Increasingly tired of “building engineering systems so that other people do science”, was attracted to Hill to do research on his own and inscribed to a doctorate in astrophysics, where he studied the upper atmosphere of the earth.
After his doctorate, for several years, Hill’s career has largely focused on solar observation, as part of the teams investigating the space weather. He then moved into a management role at the head of a group of software developers.
When Hill considered that his day work as a software manager did not respond to his need for an outlet to do science or research ”, he was leaned over astronomy as a hobby, and “perhaps a little won during the cocovable era”.
Configuration of success
Hill started with what he describes as a “beautiful amateur telescope” configuration “and was interested in using filters to look at the composition of the methane of the high atmosphere of Jupiter.
“Amateurs have been doing it for years, even decades,” he says. After a short while, he also became interested in observing the lower methane groups and began to identify other groups which, according to him, could be ammonia.
“I’m going to generalize, but I’m really talking about myself: as scientists, I think we tend to be neurotic and dubbing me,” he said. “So, when I saw things that seemed to be able to be ammonia, I thought, Uuhh, what’s wrong with my telescope? … I do something funny here with mathematics, and I had noise here, and it looks weird.
When Hill repeated his observations enough to have started to behave, he realized that he could really be on something, and began to seek a way to confirm his independently. He contacted John Rogers to the British Astronomical Association which put him in contact with Patrick Irwin, professor of the Physics Department of the University of Oxford.
“At the start, I was a little doubtful,” said Irwin. “But I started watching his data and looking at the technique and I realized, oh, it works. And in fact, the ammonia cards that you remove it terribly resemble the ammonia cards that you obtain from the Juno microwave radiometer, and from very large radio-tescopes, and they have surveyed in depth.
The ammonia cards generated using Hill equipment can be obtained much faster and to a tiny fraction of the cost of those accessible from more sophisticated equipment, opening other opportunities for amateur astronomers and citizen scientists to contribute to our understanding of the atmosphere of Jupiter.
Amateur or not?
Hill recognizes that his doctorate and his career journey make it difficult to know if he is really an amateur astronomer.
“I am not paid for that, it is not my career, I used amateur equipment at my own pace, but I have this context of training,” he said. “There is certainly a spectrum, and I think that people who have more training and work in the scientific field of citizens can help to fill this gap between citizens and professional scientists because they can share the language.”
You must find ways to support amateur superstars
Hill thinks that we are on the right trajectory to continue to establish better links between professional scientists and citizens, but this could be done to combat “finesse” insofar as scientific citizens are engaged in different disciplines. It is also important to find ways to better finance citizens’ science initiatives.
“I think you have to find ways to support amateur superstars … People who really help coordinate and connect the scientists of citizens to professional scientists,” he said. “In astronomy, there are people who write programs and applications that make what I do possible.”