Steve Gottlieb (amateur astronomer)

Background

Gottlieb started tracking Messier objects in 1977 with a 6-inch reflector. Over time, he used a variety of telescopes from dark locations around the San Francisco Bay Area, the Sierra Nevada foothills, and star parties across California and beyond. By 2017, after multiple trips to the Southern Hemisphere, he had observed all 7,840 entries in the NGC Catalogue. The collection of his visual reports is now a key reference for other amateur astronomers.

He calls himself a "hardcore visual observer" and never took up astrophotography, explaining that for him, the appeal has always been the visual experience at the eyepiece of a large telescope. As his work deepened, he used the astronomy library at UC Berkeley to compare his own sightings with professional data and the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. This led him to find many errors and inconsistencies, prompting him to start corresponding with astronomers like Dr. Harold Corwin.

Gottlieb became a lead investigator in the NGC/IC Project, a joint effort between professionals and amateurs to correctly identify deep-sky objects, compile historical records, and fix mistakes in the NGC and IC catalogs. He also collaborated with telescope manufacturers to update the databases in digital setting circles and GoTo systems. Later, he compiled the object list and wrote descriptions for the "DeepMap 600," a widely used folding star chart.

Did You Know?

• Gottlieb earned a master's degree in mathematics at UC Berkeley in 1973.
• He taught high school mathematics in the East Bay for 37 years.