Does This Telescope Make My A&& Look Too Big?

Fantasy view of women and telescopes

A long time ago — in the dark ages — amateur astronomy was pretty much thought to be a male domain. The telescope magazines used to show pictures of telescopes with pretty girls standing next to them. Sort of like the geek’s equivalent to the hot car with the half-nekkid babe draped over the hood — sort of like this one I found over at Scope Reviews.com.

Pretty stupid when you think about it — that attitude that some dish was going to go out stargazing lugging that light bucket around all dolled up in heels and a dress. So, things have changed today, right? Well, sure. There’s change and then there’s change. We see a lot more women at star parties (and a lot more females in Big Astronomy). A lot of them have some pretty cool scopes. The astronomy ads are likely to show just the scopes these days, without the need for eye candy. So that’s all cool.

But there are still some strange attitudes out there about women doing astronomy. I like to read sci.astro.amateur on Usenet — and most of the folks on there are as nice and welcoming as you’d ever imagine. But occasionally there’ll be some discussion about how to get “the wife” to allow more eyepiece purchases, or “what do I do if my wife isn’t interested in astronomy?” which then lead to some strange, sexist commentary in the replies. One memorable exchange a few years ago had a guy wondering out loud in a message about building his wife a telescope and painting it pink so she’d get more interested in the hobby. Reminded me of those silly pink-handled tool sets that come out every year in time for Mother’s Day. These folks never figure out that making something pink doesn’t make it any more useful for a woman than it would be for a man.

Sometimes when I read these message I think of a bunch of little boys in a treehouse somewhere, arguing about how to keep the “gurls” out.

So, what do they think women astronomers worry about when we’re out stargazing? Getting our eye shadow on the viewfinder? Color-coordinating our shoes with our battery-operated socks? Whether or not a 6″ Dob or a 8″ newtonian will make her hips look too big?

Tell you a secret: we’re astronomers. We like to look at things through the scope when the spirit moves us — just like the guys do. We buy eyepieces. We polish our mirrors. We swear at the damned tracking motor when it doesn’t track right. We bitch about the seeing and whine about the mosquitos and no-see-ums just like the big boys. And when everything comes together on a perfect evening, we’re moved by the beauty we see in the skies.

So, let’s hear it for skygazers and let’s forget about whether they’re XX or XY. Besides, lugging around a huge telescope is bound to make your ass feel tired before it feels big…

Clouds!

We’ve been looking at a lot of cloud bottoms lately. Today they’re about to drop water on us, and I’m hoping they’ll clear up before tonight so I can look at Mars. But what do you do when you’re rained out and still want to enjoy some astronomy?

I like to read astronomy books. There is a stack of them in my office, waiting to be read. Things with titles like “Handbook of Infrared Astronomy” because I always wanted to understand how IR folks do their thing. There’s also Deep-Sky Wonders” — a book I edited for Sky Publishing, back when I was a books and products editor. Actually amateur observer Steve O’Meara was the first editor on the book, which is a compilation of the best and coolest columns by long-time Sky & Telescope columnist Walter Scott Houston. It came across my desk for final editing and fact checking and I spent many months poring over the words before they went to press. Then for about a year I couldn’t bear to look at the book because I was too close to it. Now, more recently though, I’ve been taking it down off the shelf and reading about starhopping from the Big Dipper or galaxy hunting in Corona Borealis, or other such little goodies that are forever enshrined in the book. It’s good armchair astronomy, especially when the cloud bottoms get to be too much.

Occasionally I get off on a science fiction jag, reading back issues of Analog or Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine to pass the time. Or, if I’m really bored, there’s also Web surfing for cool astronomy pictures!

But if you’re not into reading or Web surfing is getting old, what else can you do? Some folks have the full Cosmos TV series, first broadcast on public television in the early 1980s. That’s a great one to watch, particularly if you’re faced with a string of foggy, cloudy nights. You learn a lot from Carl Sagan’s exploration of the universe in that series, and it does keep you going until the next sucker hole in the clouds opens up and welcomes you back to an evening of stargazing!

Astronomy and the Lunatic Fringe

What is it about stargazing that draws so many fruitloops out of the closet? I’ve often wondered this while scanning the sky looking for my favorite objects. There’s something so intrinsically beautiful about the stars and planets. They’re just there being stars and planets. Most stars shine by consuming hydrogen fuel in their cores and venting the energy generated as light. Planets reflect the light of the Sun, and they orbit the Sun in predictable paths.
So, why is it these predictable, physical motions and activities draw out what a friend of mine often refers to as the “psychoceramics” experts? (translation: crackpots) I’ll be darned if I know for sure, but my guess is that there’s an innate human need for the mysterious — and since the stars and planets can’t be touched (easily), they’re good candidates for fuzzy applications of the mysterious and arcane.
Take Mars, for example. It orbits the Sun every 687 days, almost but not quite twice as long as it takes Earth to go once around the Sun. Both planets go round and round, like two kids on a merry-go-round. One planetary kid is on the inner circle, the other is on an outer circle. Every 17 years or so, the two planets end up near each other in their orbits; Mars looks big and bright in our sky, and if somebody on Mars could see us (and Earth wasn’t lost in the glare of the Sun), we’d look pretty bright and big in their sky, too. This is an entirely predictable, natural consequence of planets in orbit around a star.
This summer a huge number of amateur astronomers (and a bunch of professionals, too!) are aiming their telescopes at Mars and taking this opportunity to study the Red Planet in detail. They’re all quite dedicated to the scientific study of the planet and they’re capable of turning out some amazing work. One of the best is Don Parker — a member of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (and one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met). His images regularly grace the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) site.

Now, the amateur and professional astronomers aren’t the confused types I was referring to in my opening sentence. No, the folks I’m thinking of are whipping themselves into hysteria over this perihelic opposition of Mars (that’s what it’s officially called). And they aren’t likely to be outside actually observing the planet. Why let reality stand in the way of a good fantasy?

My charitable suggestion is that the folks who are invoking Mars as an astrological influence or even worse are ignorant of the physical processes that are at play here in the solar system. My not-so-charitable suggestion is that these people are using the Mars perihelic opposition to make some money, make a name for themselves, and/or go on a little power trip using fake scientific terminology and people’s gullibility to their advantage.
One “PhD” in astrology (no, I’m not mentioning any names (why give him/her free publicity?) is claiming that Mars’s energy signature in one’s horoscope could be causing people to be upset, overworked, suffering from ego-inflation, and engaging in fault-finding of one’s fellow workers or family members this summer. Gosh, do ya really think so???
Of course it HAS to be Mars, rather than, oh say, the recent spate of hot weather in many parts of the world. Nobody would blame personality glitches and short tempers on anything logical when a planet some 55 million kilometers away is a much more convenient source of bad karma. Right? Of course not. That wouldn’t be profitable.
A little word of advice here: astronomy’s a great science. It’s one you can do for yourself. And it’s one you can learn for yourself. You don’t need a mystic guru to read your tea leaves or use psychoceramic powers to interpret the Martian movements for you (all for a fee). Sure, you might need help from a friendly observer or a few finder charts from someplace helpful like SkyandTelescope.com — but they’re just there to help. Not do your thinking for you.
Step out there one of these summer nights around midnight and check out the stars and planets. Mars will be the one shining in the south east (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere), and it’s reddish white! No special tools required to see it!