I hope not! Re-inventing the night sky would create a huge amount more work for me, after all.

I've had observation-based papers in the journals before (really, it's the way astronomers tell each other formally what snitch stuff they've found, as students might say). But this is the first project with a great deal of theory and experimentation I've done.

Really, though, it's all about having been frustrated by the weather and other circumstances, and wanting to find some better way than "Now, everyone turn to your third chart, and squint at the labels so we can see that very faint star...." to talk about what we do.

I'm sure you'd do the same if you had the same kind of frustration in your teaching that went on for months.