Talk:John Dobson (amateur astronomer)

Untitled

I've tried to add something about John's cosmological model, but I don't really understand it so I doubt it's very accurate. If anyone wants to have a go at researching and improving it (whether it be from speaking to John or through his writings), it could use the work. Izogi 01:39, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

links

I changed the links to the websites - I do John's scheduling and am the secretary for the sidewalk astronomers, all email eventually comes to me. The links you had are to websites that haven't been updated regularly, in fact, the only updates are when information has been copied from the .us website. Please change them back - the schedules and information on the .us website is as updated as it changes. If you wish to contact me to verify this information, please check the .us website for my email address.

Ah, okay. Point taken, and I'll remove the johndobson.org link. Thanks for explaining. In case you didn't realise, I should point out that I moved the link to the documentaries to the opening paragraph, as external link citations from where they're (now) described. It didn't seem very obvious what they were from the external links. Izogi 20:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, it makes it much easier for me. I've forwarded this article on to John so that he can give me any thoughts.

I'd like to add a link to the website where people can buy his new book "The Moon Is New". Ck2pmp (talk) 07:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Newly added cosmology content

I appreciate the new cosmology content added by T.O. Rainy Day, but the following two final paragraphs (except the first sentance) sound very point-of-view oriented:

"Critics of Dobson, however, claim that his own cosmological model is not well based on science, and that his arguments against the predominant cosmological model has been through quoting people and theories incorrectly, and out of context. However Dobson’s critics may themselves be quoting Dobson out of context, or do not fully understand his concepts. Furthermore, Dobson’s view that the universe is apparitional rather than actual, and his penchant of expressing his ideas (when he writes) within a spiritual or metaphysical context, doesn’t set well with everyone. Even so, Dobson is most capable of expressing his views exclusively within the conventional scientific paradigm, as those who have heard him speak can attest. Ultimately, Dobson is more interested in challenging people to broaden their thinking, and to think more critically, than to debate which cosmological model is correct.

"It should be noted that Dobson is far from alone in his criticism of the Big Bang model. It is coming under increasingly vocal criticism from scientists troubled by the inconsistencies between the theory and astronomical observations. Others are increasingly expressing concern, like Dobson, about the concepts used to “fix” the theory to make it agree with observations. In 2005, for example, a study of the cosmic microwave background radiation, usually cited as the “remnants of the Big Bang,” is now casting doubt on the model itself because it appears the radiation is far too uniform to have traveled from the edges of the universe without exhibiting more gravitational lensing effects. [ref: Lieu and Mittaz in Astrophysical Journal.] Recent findings that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing has also caused difficulties for the Big Bang model."

Specifically, everything up until this point is a statement of fact, whether it's "Dobson claims this", or that "his critics claim that". At this point though, the content seems to move into opinionated text and it's not (yet) backing anything up with citations, such as the claim of the "increasingly vocal criticism from scientists" about the Big Bang, and what relevance this criticism has to the BB theory or John Dobson's theory. I realise that there's a reference to a study claiming that microwave background radiation doesn't properly match the Big Bang theory, but one thing I've noticed is that studies like this tend to do more to refine the existing big bang model to something slightly different from what everyone had assumed than to outright disprove anything. Anyway, for the record, this is why I'm going to attempt to rearrange some of the new text and remove a few other bits. I'm not intending to start an edit war, and I'd be happy to discuss it further if there's disagreement. Izogi 09:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I noticed subsequent edits somewhat disassociating John’s model from the SS paradigm. I took a cosmology class from John in the early 1990’s, and he clearly stated his model was a steady state model. I have re-edited to reflect John’s statements on the matter. Also, his model is not one of an expanding universe (as in the BB model), but rather of matter expanding outward in the universe. Made an edit to correct what seemed to imply the former.

Perhaps one day i’ll have the time to track down links to critics of BB, but i think the article stands well enough at this point without my previous comments on the subject, so not a high-priority. – T.O. Rainy Day 9-February-2009 —Preceding undated comment was added at 10:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC).

Dobsonian

This article and the articles related to this subject mistakenly label "The Dobsonian" as just a mount design. This seems to be incorrect. "The Dobsonian" is an entire telescope "mount" and "tube assembly" design incorporating innovations attributed to John Dobson.(Halfblue 06:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC))

Question about prominence of “Dobsonian”

Although the article is informative and covers what seem to be most aspects of John Dobson’s life, I question the non-prominent listing of the “Dobsonian”. His “claim to fame”, in a way of speaking, for most people is the “Dobsonian” telescope. Shouldn’t that be a full heading on it’s own and not a sub-heading and maybe even be included in the article synopsis? It’s sort of like looking up Henry Ford and finding an article about his philanthropy with a sub heading way down that article that that says “oh by the way… he founded the Ford Motor Company that invented the Model T”(Halfblue 15:46, 10 March 2006 (UTC))

Maybe, but I'm not 100% sure. As I understand it, the Dobsonian Telescope from a John Dobson perspective (while his main claim to fame) was really just a stepping stone towards his wanting to promote astronomy, and it ties in a lot with sidewalk astronomers. The telescope design is certainly important (hence the dedicated article), but in a John Dobson article I'm not sure how to talk about it without going into detail about what he did with it, and what he wanted to use it for. Just my thoughts, anyway. Izogi 01:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the recent edits adding a Dobsonian reference to the header paragraph help addresses this. The problem I am noticing is what you cited... editing a biography of a living person from that person's perspective. Lots of politicians think they are, from their perspective, the greatest person on earth who never committed a crime, and they continually edit their biographies on Wikipedia to reflect that (hopefully not comparing John Dobson to a crooked politician here ;^)). Efforts to remedy that on Wikipedia seem to point at a growing policy of NOT editing biographies to match the subjects POV.

The other problem I am noticing (and I don't know the fix for this) is John Dobson was sort of pushed into prominence. Whenever I see or hear him interviewed the interviewer has no idea why Dobson is prominent... i.e. the invention of an obscure (to the interviewer) telescope design. The interviewer then flails around trying to find something relevant to talk about and the interview goes off on tangents regarding Dobson’s personal views on cosmology. This article seems to suffer from that same problem--- but that’s my view ;^).Halfblue 13:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I see what you mean and completely agree. I've had another go at editing the introduction to try and prioritise info about where his popularity comes from. Do you think it's more representative now? I might be completely wrong about this, but I'm not sure he'd disagree with what I've just written. I think he's fully aware that many people know of him because his name is on a telescope, and he's perfectly happy to use the attention as an opportunity to talk about what interests him. (Perhaps along the line of "If they want me to talk about that, they can damn well listen to me talk about other things too." :) )

I met John about a year ago when our society hosted him. He was reluctant as ever to talk about telescopes and sidewalk astronomy, but still did it because he knows that's what most people know him for and are expecting to hear about. Then he goes off on the cosmology tangents as soon as people run out of questions for the earlier topics meaning he doesn't have to talk about them any more. I was a bit disappointed at the time that the people who might have asked the most interesting questions challenging his cosmology completely stayed away from the meetings we had. Izogi 21:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

General Info

Just like to say that 'J.D' stayed with me and my family in September 2006. Fantastic guy, oodles of knowledge. It was a pleasure meeting him.Dapi89 00:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

There's an NPS Oral History interview with JD posted at http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/cultural-history/oral-histories/oral-history-series/john-lowery-dobson.htm which I conducted at Crater Lake National Park in 2004 during the time when he received the Crater Lake Institute's Annual Award for Excellence in Public Service for promoting sidewalk astronomy in the national parks and forests "where curious minds and dark skies collide."--Pkrnger 22:02, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

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Big Bang/ Dobson's cosmology section

I did some work on this section to tone down the general rhetoric. I think that we can discuss his viewpoints without feeling the obligation to aggrandize nor denigrate them. Remember this is the biography of a living person so we need to follow the WP:LIVE guidelines.Trilobitealive (talk) 15:34, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree and have done a touch more cleanup re:verifiability.Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 19:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Sidewalk/Street performance

This article seems to miss the sidewalk astronomy/street performance aspect of Dobsons career. Its an activity he still engages in and everything he is know for seems to have grown out of it (i.e he was thrown out of the monastery for it, he designed the dobsonian telescope for that activity, The San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers were organized from that activity, etc). There is a good BIO ref that describes it all at http://www.telescopedobsonian.com/jd.html. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:46, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

John Dobson direct descendant of John Pond?

(John Dobson) was a direct descendant of the British astronomer John Pond, which inspired his early interest in the field. ref Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, "A Sidewalk Astronomer", documentary film, Copyright 2005, Jacobs Entertainment Inc./ref

Rm'ed this to talk because the claim shows up in no online bio of Dobson. May be true but needs check and maybe transcript quote. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 17:26, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Sentence 1

It seems clear he is best known for the "Dobsonian" design, so this should be in S1. Unless there is an objection, I will rework the lead a bit to make that S1, with the popularizing 2nd to that.Unfriend14 (talk) 20:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

"Cosmology Quest"

So, yeah, it looks pretty trivial. While the cosmology thing was clearly important to him, and merits mention in his obits, I am not sure this 2004 docuthing is worth mentioning. It is in the ELs. Original remover may have been right.Unfriend14 (talk) 07:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

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Why no TOC?

Just a general Wiki question. This article has more than three sections, so why wasn't a TOC generated automatically? Perhaps because sections got added later on? Pekoebrew (talk) 17:30, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

It was TOC right, I removed it. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 01:50, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

So you removed it just yesterday? Maybe I missed the TOC on the right side. But that huge blank space looks awful, I will put in TOC left. Feel free to revert if you must. Thanks for answering :) Pekoebrew (talk) 02:54, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I reverted it since TOC left with blank space is standard MOS. Removing blank space set up MOS:SANDWICHING. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 13:43, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Guess there's no accounting for MOS taste. Thanks for the lesson. Pekoebrew (talk) 22:07, 31 May 2020 (UTC)