I’m sitting here in Munich’s airport waiting for my flight back to the U.S. and thinking about the wonderful time I’ve had this past week at the European Southern Observatory’s sponsored meeting “Communicating Astronomy With the Public.” It brought together 120 or so scientists, writers, animators, and others to discuss how science communication in our discipline of astronomy is going, how it can be improved, and what some future trends are going to be.
Rather than try to summarize all the really great stuff, I’m going to send you to the website for the meeting, which has video captures of all our presentations (I talked about planetariums and their role in communicating astronomy), plus copies of most of the powerpoint presentations given in the meeting. You can see the program with links to the talks, video sessions, and powerpoints at the CAP programme page.
I found the meeting to be really helpful, had a chance to get together with many old friends, and some of my clients; as well, it was fun to meet some new folks and swap ideas!
Hubble Space Telescope is one of those icons of modern civilization that sparks curiosity in all of us about exploring the cosmos. I have always found it pretty interesting that, in a time when many of us who are “into” space cut our teeth watching Star Trek and Star Wars, our imaginations are fired by a telescope that does deep-space exploration for us.
It has been a privilege to watch this telescope do its work, even as public perception of it has changed from “Oh, it’s the great HST!” to “It’s a techno-turkey” (after the discovery of spherical aberration) to “It’s doing science” to “Save the HST!” I did my master’s thesis in science journalism on the media treatment of the Hubble Space Telescope, and so I traced its up and down public perception over the course of five years. It’s amazing to think back to the bad old days, when I was about to start graduate school and had just joined an HST instrument team as a graduate research associate. Right after launch we were elated that it was up and seemed to be functioning. Then came the spherical aberration diagnosis and the dark days when all our hallway conversations focused on the burning question, “How could this happen?”
Gradually, as the technicians figured out how to eke good science from the aberrated data, public perception shifted. Each great new image cemented in people’s minds the fact that with ingenuity, we could get good science. Perhaps that’s a valuable lesson to keep in mind in a “I want mine, NOW” culture — that sometimes you have to work harder and longer and be smarter to achieve the really meaningful bling.
Long time readers of this blog know that I never talk politics here. But there comes a time when all of us should think critically about the choices that face us as a nation, especially when it comes to national and international assets like the Hubble Space Telescope. And, these days we find ourselves faced with a number of problems that demand that we actually ask questions of our governments and do a lot of critical thinking about the answers we get. It’s up to us to be THAT responsible, and that’s a fact of life for any citizen in a democracy. We HAVE to ask questions, even of people we might agree with, and act as citizens should when we get the answers. So, forgive me if I get political here: it’s for a good cause.
These days, the fate of the HST hangs in the balance. It CAN be serviced, but the political will to take the risks to do so is not there. We KNOW what the risks are in a shuttle mission, and we can work around them. We can’t say the same for rushing into a war over what now appear to be nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
And so, it’s up to citizens to make it known that we value the space telescope and other aspects of our science and space programs. They’re part of the GOOD stuff about our country, an integral piece of the learning and technology assets we jointly own as citizens. So, we have to do what our citizenship requires: we tell our representatives or our president that we don’t want to lose this asset due to political inaction or fear. We ask the tough questions about the decisions being made in our name. It’s not easy, and it is just as simple to sit back and “let somebody else do it.” But it’s not that simple.
HST's view of the Ring Nebula: An HST Gift From Across Space and Time
HST represents the hard work of friends and neighbors, famous folks and not-so-famous folks. When I wrote my first book about HST with Jack Brandt, we spent a lot of time talking with the scientists who helped make it possible. They aren’t eggheads or enemies of the state or people to be wary of—they’re people anyone would be proud to know, to call as friend or neighbor. And collectively, they’ve brought us incredible insights into the universe. I think we owe it to them and their hard work to defend HST against the shortsightedness of budgeteers who can’t see past the next election cycle.
The telescope’s done an incredible job; it still has a useful lifetime ahead of it. And I, for one, will miss it when it’s gone. It’s been a huge part of my life, and whether or not everyone else realizes it, it’s been a large part of yours as well. Please let your representative and president know that we want HST to stay up and working as long as possible, and that a well-managed servicing mission is not impossible; it’s a risk worth taking.
