How many UK amateur astronomers are there ?

[ashenlight]

exactly what I was thinking pete

[Talyn]

'Ordinary' people do seem to be interested in the subject, even those who don't class themselves as 'amateur astronomers'. During my last temporary work assignment, several people in the office, who are not amateur astronomers, were talking about the recent Perseids. I took the opportunity of talking to them about our local society and telling them there's an open evening at the local observatory every Thursday. It seems to me that inside the general non-astronomer populace there are amateur astronomers struggling to get out but maybe they don't know where to start.

I know outreach programs are ongoing and this is the International Year of Astronomy, but when I started I didn't know that there was so much to see in the sky beyond the planets, the odd comet when it showed up, and a few bright star clusters, much less the richness of the amateur scene and the existence of clubs and societies. I only found our local society, in 1992, quite by accident as I was looking through the local paper for something else entirely! It was a small notice in the 'Village Talk' section about an open garden in aid of the society put on by one of the members! I went along and found out there was a whole Universe out there, not just in the sky but among amateur astronomers as a whole.

Re. putting a hobbies section on the Census form. Don't, that might give 'em ideas: 'Ah, that's popular, we'll tax it!'

[ron.s.g]

I thought 42 was only the meaning of life.

ron.s.g

[TheThing]

Life, the universe and everything...

[Woodsey65]

This reminds me of the Guinness Billboard advert from the late Nineties...

'74% of all statistics are made up on the spot'.

When starting HantsAstro I did a lot of research on this and this is what I discovered.

BBC Sky at night viewers circa 500,000-600,000 (many with their video recorders set to stun!)

BBC Sky@Night Mag readership - 60,000 (12,000 subscriber base)

1500 members SAGAS (South of England) FAS Regional Group

SPA - 3000 members...

4000 UK monthly readers of HantsAstro's Look Up! with 16,000+ unique visitors to our site from the UK over the past 12 months

AstroSouth Directory - 63 Groups - 4000 downloads so far.

Forums - Circa 3,500 nucleus across several forums.

When I talked to Ant about this last year, we kinda a settled of 10,000 to 20,000 active astronomers UK, so SGL still has some way to go!

There are no mailing list to identify this group as I have requested several searches. Even though suggested profiling, it would yield 250+K who MAY be interested in Astronomy. The BBC TV figures support this.

SGL did a straw poll some time ago that showed 40% of astronomers have ever joined a group... any why.

Currently the UK Population is 61 Million.

We were running the Telescope Clinic at the Great Look Up! at Surrey University last Friday. It was the biggest outside observing-event held in the South with over 350 people attending. It was busy.

We need more events like this, simple as that.

Hope this throws some light on the subject.

Dave

[Guest]

I would be interested in how you get to a BBC Sky t Night magazine readership of 60000 as they do not publish audited figures and the printing run is probably of the order of 30000. I would suspect that AN has a higher readership level and they have never claimed 60000 magazines. Also given that a percentage maybe groupies rather than astrononers (witness what happened at the SSP last month). My suspicion s that you maybe overestimating the numbers involved. The bad thing is that with the continued dumbing down of scince education these numbers may get smaller rather than larger in the future as you need some kind of basic scence education to get in to the subject.

Owen

[Woodsey65]

I would be interested in how you get to a BBC Sky t Night magazine readership of 60000 as they do not publish audited figures and the printing run is probably of the order of 30000. I would suspect that AN has a higher readership level and they have never claimed 60000 magazines. Also given that a percentage maybe groupies rather than astrononers (witness what happened at the SSP last month). My suspicion s that you maybe overestimating the numbers involved. The bad thing is that with the continued dumbing down of scince education these numbers may get smaller rather than larger in the future as you need some kind of basic scence education to get in to the subject.

Owen

OBrazell!!! How are you?

Got the Figures last year from SKY@Night directly and the BBC TV... but they may have dropped a little. I hope it's not 30K but it does not state how many are worldwide... Astronomy Now was 20-25K as Callump also states.

Figures? We phoned them. But then they are sales people...

The figures I state are from known sources. It does not identify though who have a passing interest or who are hard-core, but a paid for subscription would be a good indicator , and that is (mostly) a two-horse race in the UK

As discussed at SSP, we aim to make it easier to access astronomy without dumbing down. I think the dumbing down is an attempt to attract the 'Yoof' element methinks... Astronauts tend to be in their 30's and 40's and takes a decade to train.

This is Astronomy not Pokemon!

We aim at parents not kids as a Group, which is why have a member age of 33, and 165+ members in our first year. Says it all.

Astronomy needs the promotion, that's all, and that is part of our experiment as a Group. To find that path that other groups can emulate easily, to drive astronomy forward. We do that by example as there is no other way as it would only ever be a theory and requires a bit of risk, of which many groups are not in a position to take for a number of reasons. We had no other choice to semi-commercialise it from the out-set too, otherwise how else could it be done?

The point is, in order to get Astronomy out there it has to change it's image, as a high-brow, costly and specialist past-time. We all share the same sky, but there's too many fifedoms out there so the message is a fragmented one.

Groupies? Wishful thinking.

Rock On.

Dave

[dobserver]

Well there is certainly one more than there used to be only last week!

Steph