It’s a Heritage Science

A few weeks ago I went to Poland for a meeting called “Communicating Astronomy with the Public.” It was a gathering of about 200 people who work daily in bringing astronomy to public audiences. I presented a video called Losing the Dark about light pollution, and was part of a discussion about dark skies heritage for our children. All of us attending know that astronomy is one of the oldest, and most-approachable of all sciences. It’s also a gateway science; if you study astronomy, you can’t help but end up studying physics, chemistry, life sciences, astrobiology, and geology.

Astronomy began when the first people had a chance to go outside, look up, and marvel at the sky. It wasn’t long before they figured out how to use the sky as a calendar, a timekeeper. Why would they do that?  To predict the seasons, which for hunter-gatherers as well as farmers is an important thing to do. If you know what season is coming up and when it begins, you know when to plant, to harvest, to hunt certain animals. Using the sky became a matter of survival. Later on, the use of the sky became more ritualized and incorporated into religious aspects of life, but the calendar and time-keeping functions remained as part of the observational practice of astronomy.

It really wasn’t until the Renaissance that astronomy came into its own as a science. And, from there, it evolved with each astronomer who put his or her telescope to work. Today, we stand on the shoulders of many giants in astronomy, beginning with the ancient Greeks, to Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Herschel, Hubble, and many others too numerous to name here. We get our star names from Arabic astronomers, our massive catalogs of galaxies and other deep sky objects from Herschel, Messier and others. Our perception of the universe was changed by Hubble, using Henrietta Leavitt’s discovery of the period-luminosity relationship of variable stars and their changing brightnesses. And, today, there are perhaps 10,000 trained astronomers using the world’s telescopes to learn more about the cosmos.

But, there are hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers, too. Some are quite expert at observing and own very good equipment. Others are backyard-type astronomers using binoculars or small telescopes to explore the cosmos. And many people are content to go out each night, look at some constellations and planets and stars and take in the beauty of the night sky.

Astronomy IS for everybody. We should be encouraging more astronomy in our schools because it’s such an easy entry to other sciences. And science-literate children grow up to be savvier adults participating in society. It’s not a stretch; it’s true. And astronomy is a heritage we need to keep sharing.