Re: Sky and Telescope now stitched?

On Sep 9, 5:00 am, tony_fland...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

See Rick Fienberg's discussion of magazine length (and other topics)
in Cloudy Nights, Stellar Media forum, under "Goodby S&T"
It's near the bottom of the page at this URL:

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/1669...


I noticed that loss of subscribers was mentioned in Fienberg's above-
linked posting. Our hobby has undergone some major changes in recent
years. We've gone from a group where nearly everyone used their own
eyes, brains and muscles to point a telescope to a group where some
point a telescope the old-fashioned way and others use one of the more
modern approaches. We've gone from a group where most people did most
of their amateur astronomy from a dark sky to a group where most do
their astronomy under various degrees of light pollution. Then came
the CCD. More and more people are setting aside their eyes and
replacing them (at the "eyepiece" end of a telescope) with CCDs. In
short, amateur astronomers have evolved into a more diverse group; or
into several, different, individual, splinter groups.

I no longer subscribe to S&T. As with many things in life, my reason
is actually a combination of many reasons. One reason was pointed out
in the above linked Fienberg post. S&T cannot satisfy all of the
people all of the time. I'm a visual observer who observes from 6.5
magnitude skies. I still do not own, nor have I ever owned a go-to
telescope. Long ago I set aside my cameras to concentrate more on the
arts of visual astronomy and sketching. My specialized little niche
gets little attention in today's astronomical publications.

Nevertheless, I have a long history of subscribing to S&T. Despite
the reasons given in the previous paragraph, I would still be a
subscriber today if other factors had not also entered into the
equation. One of these is cost. Related to cost are the
circumstances of my last S&T subscribtion. After allowing my previous
subscription to lapse (due to content, cost, and S&T's change of
management), I eventually received an offer to re-subscribe at a price
that actually looked attractive to me. I took up the offer for 12
issues at the reduced rate. A while later I received two of my new
S&Ts. Both were 'back issues". My third issue arrived a bit later;
but even that issue was late enough to be considered a back issue by
some people. It wasn't until my fourth issue arrived that I had what
appeared to be a normal subscription.

It was the above mentioned business practice that *really* soured my
taste for S&T. I've not seen the issue that started this thread. I
would have to travel over 100 miles to even look at an S&T on a
store's (or even on a library's) magazine rack.

Still, I *do* like the magazine itself as well as some of the people
(such as Sue French and Tony Flanders) who make the magazine what it
is today. (I also miss the old Unitron ads . . . ;-)

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.
http://cejour.blogspot.com
http://www.rangeweb.net/~sketcher


.

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