Richard Laermer pointed me to an interesting piece comparing the relationship  between professional and amateur astronomers to that between journalists and bloggers.

You can read the whole thing here at TechDirt.

I think the comparison is apt to a point. In astronomy, the professionals – mainly the folks at the large research institutions and universities who have access to the expensive equipment – do most of the theoretical work while the amateurs – folks who have a love of astronomy but never pursued it as a career – fill in on the observational side. A perfect example happened only last month when amateurs observed two meteor hits on Jupiter.

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