Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2020

50 MARCH-APRIL 2020 OUR EXPERIENCES The evolution of magazines by Michele Ferrara Astro Publishing revised by Damian G. Allis NASA Solar System Ambassador A mateur astronomers have al- ways existed, and the former, perhaps, were not even hu- man. Contemplation of the night sky in the pre-industrial era was usual. This is demonstrated by the countless myths and legends that the most dis- parate peoples created by admiring the night sky. Over the past two cen- turies, this link between human be- ings and Nature’s wider spectacle has increasingly weakened due to various forms of pollution, which have grad- ually erased the stars above the most densely populated areas. Observing the night sky thus began to become an activity for a few willing, rarely in contact with each other, but all eager to learn more about what they ob- served in the sky and how to optimize techniques and instruments. Between the last decades of the Nine- teenth Century and the early Twenti- eth Century, this loose movement of