Astronomy C

[Unome]

I agree that the DSOs each year are difficult to predict outside of big events like M87/EHT or the discovery of gravitational waves. When we pick DSOs, we generally try to have a mix of "classic examples", "interesting" objects that highlight something unusual or meaningful about that class of objects, and a couple of objects that hint at the direction the event may take over the next few years, among other things. On top of that, there isn't a set rotation for the topics.

However, I strongly disagree with the idea that "everything you could every need to know about the DSOs on the wikipedia page alone". As a competitor, I remember Wikipedia being one of the least useful resources out there for DSOs, and I relied mostly on sources like Chandra/Hubble/ESO/etc and research papers instead. All in all, I don't think Wikipedia is that useful in this event when you're taking a well-written test anyways.

Yeah the official agency sites will always have the best information, but about everything I’ve seen on a test this year has been so unbelievably surface level any in-depth research has been useless. Hopefully states will be better, but so far it’s been a little bit of a let down because the test quality has sucked for Astronomy in my area.

I've found that a lot of astronomy is some grey superposition of these two points. I agree that Wikipedia is pretty useless as far as DSO research goes, it tends to have far less useful information than press releases do, and is is mainly useful for the basic fact file it gives (that pretty much ends up on this wiki anyway). However, it tends to be difficult for an ES that isn't very knowledgeable in astronomy to do much more than Wikipedia (they don't necessarily know that the Chandra website exists), so sometimes that's all you are going to need.

Not just for the DSOs, this event in general, I've found, is one of the least consistent in that it can be extremely difficult, a fun challenge, or a pretty huge let-down, and there is no way to know which one you are going to come across. I have utmost respect for an ES; they are volunteering their time so that I can compete in this event, and I am grateful no matter what. I know that they are not intentionally making an exam that is too surface-level or too easy. However, I feel like this event can be just as difficult for an ES as the participant, so we just always see the huge quality swing, and depending on who writes it, Wikipedia might be more than enough, or might be as useful as accidentally bringing in the Ornithology binder to the Astronomy event.

ON ANOTHER NOTE...
The Chandra Unofficial Archive is back up!!!!!! New link: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/archive/chandra/search .

Astronomy is in an interesting situation where the bar for the event has been raised very high over the years, such that what's considered relatively basic content for this event is pretty in-depth, and therefore hard to find info on. As you've noted, the situation affects event supervisors too, as not all of them can necessarily meet the standards that the event brings out in competitors.