Note to Astronomical League
I found a few YouTube live all sky cameras. They are for weather, weather research, astronomical viewing planning, a tiny bit of actual teaching of human astronomical methods, some moon and sun projects, some cosmic ray and lightning, some comet, some other things.
I just wondered if your members and groups are doing this, and if they are working together yet.
I wanted to join the Astronomical League as a member at large. Can I join and have you not send me anything by mail? Partly covid still. But also I don’t need things.
I joined the Houston Astronomical Society, but wanted to also work with all groups. I tried to encourage them to host an all sky camera at their observing site. Houston has more than a million people and they all rarely see the moon at night, let alone stars. The newer cameras are very high resolution and can be set up to serve many people. A city like Houston and many other places can afford sites so all people can see the sky and its recorded data any time — for weather and sky. There are 200,000+ children in schools in Houston. There are 1.92 Billion children (5-20) in the world right now. They need to all be able to see the sky anywhere on earth, and learn to study it quantitatively and together. I have contacted groups like NASA and some of its astronomical contractors, European Space Agency and many global climate change groups. The reason is you cannot do ground based astronomy on any frequency unless you also measure, monitor and model the atmosphere and fields around the earth.
My full time job is the Internet Foundation, where I track the whole of what people are using the Internet for, and try to encourage standards and help groups work globally. With covid, so many schools, corporations, organizations, individuals and groups were forced quickly onto the Internet. Few of them prepared and most doing a rather poor job of it.
Sorry to ramble on. I try to write out the whole of things. I took over TheInternetFoundation.Org and its responsibilities from Network Solutions in Jul 1998 after the original Internet Foundation ($15 per year per domain) was cancelled for US political reasons.
Richard Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation
Houston Texas
I wrote you a note and this form limits to 1024 characters. So I posted my message at
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I asked about joining the League. I am looking for people interested in using all sky cameras, and online telescopes, to share and teach and inform.
Richard Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation
I tried again and it said, “No contact information”. So I refreshed the page, entered all my information, pasted my note into the message, and tried to type that LONG and ugly captcha. I got it right after the third try. It cleared the form of all I entered saying “No contact information is available.” So the form does not work. This (really bad software for the most basic things that should work anywhere on the Internet every time) is the norm for the Internet.
The poor organizations are hand building these things. I was thinking about donating to help put all sky cameras where there were people who wanted to do that sort of thing. Giving money is not the answer, if the people are not inspired to do it themselves with a little help.
I would be upset, if broken contact forms occur just as often on the largest and richest sites on the Internet. Oh well. Oh well.
I joined as a patron member, but wish things worked better.
