Gregg D. Thompson of Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 is an amateur astronomer

Amateur astronomy

Amateur astronomy, also called backyard astronomy and stargazing, is a hobby whose participants enjoy watching the night sky , and the plethora of objects found in it, mainly with portable telescopes and binoculars...

 and the executive director of the Dreamtech Designs and Productions company.

Astronomy

Gregg Thompson was one of the founding members of the Southern Astronomical Society (SAS).
Before 1981 he started making a set of charts of bright galaxies, designed to help deep sky

Deep sky

Deep-sky objects are astronomical objects other than individual stars and solar system objects . The classification is used for the most part by amateur astronomers to denote visually observed faint naked eye and telescopic objects such as star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.-Origins and...

 observers

Observational astronomy

Observational astronomy is a division of the astronomical science that is concerned with getting data, in contrast with theoretical astrophysics which is mainly concerned with finding out the measurable implications of physical models...

 in their search for extragalactic

Extragalactic astronomy

Extragalactic astronomy is the branch of astronomy concerned with objects outside our own Milky Way Galaxy. In other words, it is the study of all astronomical objects which are not covered by galactic astronomy, the next level of galactic astronomy....

 supernova

Supernova

A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced with the plural supernovae or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months...

e.
In 1985 he received the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Astronomical Society of the Pacific

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...

, together with Robert Owen Evans

Robert Evans (astronomer)

Robert Owen Evans is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and an amateur astronomer who holds the all-time record for visual discoveries of supernovae ....

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who had made several supernova discoveries using Thompson's charts.
Evans wrote that the number of galaxies he was able to observe grew substantially after the charts were produced. Gregg Thompson also helped verify some of Evans' discoveries.

Public outreach

In 1990 Gregg Thompson co-authored with James T. Bryan, Jr. the astronomical

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 atlas

Atlas

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets in the Solar System. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats...

 The Supernova Search Charts and Handbook, containing 248 comparison charts of 345 of the brightest galaxies

Galaxy

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...

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highly valued especially by supernova hunters and recommended by the Supernova Search Committee of the American Association of Variable Star Observers

American Association of Variable Star Observers

Since its founding in 1911, the American Association of Variable Star Observers has coordinated, collected, evaluated, analyzed, published, and archived variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers and makes the records available to professional astronomers, researchers, and...

.
In 1993 he published The Australian Guide to Stargazing, a manual for both naked-eye

Naked eye

The naked eye is a figure of speech referring to human visual perception unaided by a magnifying or light-collecting optical device, such as a telescope or microscope. Vision corrected to normal acuity using corrective lenses is considered "naked"...

 and telescope

Telescope

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...

 observing of the sky of the southern hemisphere

Southern Hemisphere

The Southern Hemisphere is the part of Earth that lies south of the equator. The word hemisphere literally means 'half ball' or "half sphere"...

 with explanatory diagrams, photographs and detailed drawings, describing the basics of the night sky

Night sky

The term night sky refers to the sky as seen at night. The term is usually associated with astronomy, with reference to views of celestial bodies such as stars, the Moon, and planets that become visible on a clear night after the Sun has set. Natural light sources in a night sky include moonlight,...

 observation to novice amateur astronomers.

With his Dreamtech Designs and Productions company he also opened the educational interactive high-tech attractions SpaceWalker and Infinity at the Gold Coast

Gold Coast, Queensland

Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...

, Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, Australia.