Picture by Anthony Wesley

Today’s inspirational story is amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley who was the first person to detect and report a new spot appearing on the surface of Jupiter this week.  Why is this inspirational?  Forty years ago this week, it took millions of dollars and many man-hours to put a man on the moon.  In our new era, though, an amateur astronomer has the tools and the knowledge to detect changes on the surface of a planet over 360 million miles away.

Whats more, he is able to capture images of it and transmit them to millions of people, alerting them all to the changes.  I see these changes occurring in every profession, hobby, and industry around the world: the “average” person is being empowered to embrace a huge amount of knowledge and tools available to them and use them to do something amazing, like Wesley did this week.

(via BoingBoing)