Astronomy Hacks

Why Astronomy Hacks?

The term hacking has a bad reputation in the press. They use it to refer to people who break into systems or wreak havoc with computers as their weapons. Among people who write code, though, the term hack refers to a “quick-and-dirty” solution to a problem, or a clever way to get something done. And the term hacker is taken very much as a compliment, referring to someone as being creative, having the technical chops to get things done. The Hacks series is an attempt to reclaim the word, document the good ways people are hacking, and pass the hacker ethic of creative participation on to the uninitiated. Seeing how others approach systems and problems is often the quickest way to learn about a technology.

When we were growing up in the 1960s, kids didn’t sit around playing video games, listening to CDs, or watching DVDs. We did things. We ground our own telescope mirrors with blanks and grit purchased from Edmund Scientific (which is now, alas, a very pale shadow of what it once was), and built our scopes from Sonotube and pipe fittings. We built ham radio rigs from mostly scrounged components, and assembled rockets from salvaged conduit and army-surplus gyros (and concocted our own fuels). We tapped our girlfriends’ telephone lines, learned how to pick locks, and built darkrooms in the basement. We forged drivers licenses, tore down and rebuilt car engines, repaired our relatives’ televisions and appliances, constructed silencers for our .22 squirrel rifles, and ...