One of the traits I have always loved about human beings is our ability to be deeply obsessed by odd things. I am consistently charmed by the devotion of ham radio operators, of people who collect thimbles with sheep on them, and of aquarium geeks. Most of us have some peculiar thing about which we care far more than we're officially supposed to, and that brings us strange and deep pleasure, for reasons we don't fully understand. One of the subcommunities I particularly love are the amateur astronomers. There are thousands upon thousands of people who devote their free time and disposable income to watching the skies, and to sharing their love of astronomy with others. They throw star parties to bond with like-minded souls, they grind their own mirrors in their basements, and they set up telescopes on crowded city streets to show off the moons of Jupiter. They also do honest-to-god cutting edge science, tracking comets, monitoring variable stars, and even finding an absoluting amazing gravitational microlensing event. I sometimes feel a bit ashamed that I get to do astronomy for a living, when, while I love what I do, I don't looooove it with the same profound depth of these folks. Anyways, the New York Times has a great little story today about the impact of this obsession on real estate. Not only are there residential developments designed by and for amateur astronomers (no street lights here, thank you very much), but people are modifying their homes to install permanently mounted telescopes with full domes, sometimes over the objections of their local zoning boards. I'm not quite sure what it does for resale values compared to adding an extra bedroom, but I think it's just fantastic.
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