Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2020

43 MARCH-APRIL 2020 OUR EXPERIENCES I t was around 1984 when amateur astronomy in Spain underwent an unprecedented boom. The reason was Halley’s Comet, to which the media gave exhaustive coverage. At that time, the Internet was still an embryo and, if you wanted to deepen your knowledge of the comet, you had to resort to libraries, specialized press, and amateur as- tronomy associations (especially the latter if you wanted to observe the comet or other stars, as they organ- ized the star parties). From that time on, associations gath- ered new members who wanted, with the enthusiasm acquired by popularization programs such as Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series and by fol- lowing the passage of the comet, to be direct witnesses and protagonists of astronomical knowledge. The global spread of the Internet was at least ten years away and the whole landscape would change when it en- tered the scene, providing more up- dated information than books in libraries could, as well as providing forums with more participants (and, therefore, more answers to ques- tions) than local astronomy associa- tions. Moreover, you didn’t have to go to the newsstand to buy an as- tronomy magazine to read the latest articles and news; you had it at your fingertips with a click of the mouse. In particular, the astronomy associa- tions suffered a substantial drop in attendance at their meetings. Every- one became so self-contained by finding information on the web, that we wondered if the time for