“NASA often calls on amateurs to watch for specific asteroids that might be headed for Earth, an observation task coordinated via an email message group called the Minor Planet Mailing List that’s run by Richard Kowalski, a forty-two-year-old baggage handler at US Airways in Florida by day and an astronomer by night. Some of the eight hundred amateurs on the list record their observations for fun; others hope to be immortalized by having an important discovery named after them. What’s notable is that none of them do it for money.”