Amateur science noted

Quite a charming article here at Science on how a 75 year old Japanese guy is one of the most prolific discoverers of supernova.  It starts:

For Koichi Itagaki, it was just another evening of supernova hunting. After his usual 7 p.m. dinner with his wife, he drove to his private observatory in the hills above his home in Yamagata, Japan, 290 kilometers north of Tokyo. He set out treats for the only visitors he allows on his celestial patrols: a stray cat he calls Nora and the raccoon dogs that warily approach from the surrounding forest. He then took a seat within his “headquarters,” a cozy hut equipped with a bed, minifridge, microwave—and a dozen monitors used to control seven telescopes at three locations across Japan.

On clear nights, each telescope runs through a routine, focusing on one of the approximately 1000 galaxies Itagaki monitors for two 15-second exposures before swiveling to the next target. On this night, clouds blanketed most of the country, leaving a clear view only for his two telescopes in Okayama, 700 kilometers to the southwest. But as the clock ticked into the early morning of 20 May, clouds drifted over Okayama, too. Itagaki called it a night and drove home, leaving the telescopes on automatic in case the weather cleared.

It did. The next morning he had scanned the night’s images for just 5 minutes when he spotted a new, bright object in a spiral arm of the Pinwheel galaxy, 21 million light-years away. “It was so bright, I thought there was no way this object could have been missed,” he says. To his surprise, he was the first to post the news to the Transient Name Server (TNS), the International Astronomical Union’s database of new celestial objects. As word spread on TNS and the Astronomer’s Telegram, an email alert service, professionals and amateurs alike began pointing their instruments toward SN 2023ixf, the universe’s newest exploding star and the closest to Earth in a decade. It was growing brighter by the minute....

Cheerful, friendly, and easy-going, Itagaki is a trim 75-year-old with wisps of white hair, wire-rimmed bifocals, and a self-effacing sense of humor. “I am not an astronomer,” Itagaki says, smiling broadly while waving his left hand dismissively, as if shooing away a fly. “I’m looking for new celestial bodies as a hobby.” He traces his path into astronomy to a boyhood fascination with lenses. “I used to play with lenses, using sunlight to burn paper,” he says. In junior high, he spent his allowance on a DIY telescope kit and studied the Moon a bit. “I also used it to spy on the neighbors,” he says, smiling and waving.

Then in 1963, a 19-year-old Japanese amateur named Kaoru Ikeya grabbed national headlines when he discovered a comet with a more substantial homemade telescope. “It amazed me that you could search the stars like this,” Itagaki says. Within Itagaki’s hut, a framed 1963 newspaper clipping of Ikeya’s achievement hangs in homage.

 The observatory set up indicates he's put a fair amount of money into his hobby:

 And this is just one of three he uses...