Monthly Archives: May 2009

education

Science Outreach

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Teaching From the Frontiers of Science

You all know that I write materials for a lot of different venues — fulldome theaters, exhibits, podcasts, vodcasts, magazines, books, etc.  One of the questions I am often asked is “Where do you get the ideas for what to write?” Aside from the obvious commissioned works, where a client wants me to write about a specific topic like space weather or climate change (for example), I take my ideas from the “frontiers” of science, where the work is being done and publicized in some way. It might be from a press release, or a talk, or a hallway conversation at a conference that spurs my attention.

But, what if you’re a teacher working fulltime in the classroom? Or a Girl Scout leader helping students work on projects in science, or an astronomy club leader who is doing an outreach day?  Do you have the same time and resources as I do to find out what’s hot in Big Science?  Possibly, although nobody can have enough to time to follow every story, not even me. So, formal and informal educators get singled out in education and public outreach pages of various institutions such as NASA, ESA, and the major observatories and research groups.

In the last couple of entries I’ve listed institutions and observatories, and each one of those has an education and public outreach section — which I encourage you to check out if you need materials for outreach.

I just found out about a new one being made available by a group I belong to — the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.  It’s called Discoveries in Planetary Science, and it contains Powerpoint® presentations and PDFs suitable for both formal and informal educators to use in their classrooms, club meetings, etc.  The downloads are created and vetted by planetary scientists, and contain background material for lectures, plus very useful links to other pages where you can learn more about such topics as the first images of exoplanets, the chaotic early solar system, Mars atmospheric science, the sulfur cycle on Mars, and volcanoes on Mercury. There are more subjects being submitted, so keep checking back.

amateur astronomy, astronomy, citizen astronomy

Citizen Astronomers

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The Research Amateur Amateur

I saw a story making the rounds yesterday about how citizens who aren’t necessarily scientists are making great strides in some areas of research simply because they’re interested in the science. I think that’s always been around in some form or another, and none more so than in amateur astronomy.  There have always been legions of dedicated amateurs watching the sky and making contributions to science — although there have been more of them in the past 20 or so years.  Astronomy was largely performed before the 20th century by dedicated amateurs (who were often quite well trained). Today there are amateur observatories out there that rival (and sometimes surpass) many university facilities, and their owners are making valuable contributions to astronomy research.

McNeil's Nebula
McNeil’s Nebula, courtesy of Gemini Observatory. It’s a rare glimpse of the birth process of a star and the discovery of this nebula by Jay McNeil led Gemini Observatory to take a look at this nebula. It lies about 1,500 light-years away. (Click to embiggen.)

When I first got to graduate school, I worked with a number of well-trained amateurs who sent in gobs of images of Comet Halley during its closest approach.  At that time, some professional astronomers scoffed at the idea of amateurs making any kind of contribution, but they were proved wrong. And wildly so.  Take, for example, all the folks who are discovering and providing amazing images of comets and asteroids. They’re helping fill in our gaps of knowledge about what populates the solar system.

Amateur astronomy work isn’t limited to the solar system. Dedicated amateurs have been doing work studying starbirth regions, variable stars, gravitational lensing, gamma-ray bursters, and the list goes on and on.

Every night and day (for solar observers), amateur astronomers train their telescopes (and other instruments) on the sky and make observations that add to the “corpus” of knowledge humanity has about the universe. I remember once hearing a colleague of mine comment that amateur astronomers can do observations that professionals couldn’t do, either because the big observatories are over-subscribed, or because they can’t point those big telescopes so close to the ground (or the Sun). That same colleague also pointed out that if professional astronomers who couldn’t get time on the big scopes knew there was so much “free glass” out there to be used, they’d be rushing to adopt amateur astronomers and their observatories. That was 15 years ago. Today, the amateur and professional communities are indeed cooperating more than ever — largely because dedicated amateurs have the equipment and know-how to perform observations that were once solely the province of the “big” (at that time) facilities.

So, long live the amateur astronomer!  It’s a long and honorable avocation!