Category Archives: astronomy

astronomy

Writing About Astronomy

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Is a Waltz with the Cosmos

For a couple of months late in 2012 and early 2013, I was nose-to-the-grindstone busy working on a new book about astronomy. It’s called Astronomy 101: From the Sun and Moon to Wormholes and Warp Drive, Key Theories, Discoveries, and Facts about the Universe, and I was invited to write it by the publisher, Adams Media. The book is due out in a matter of weeks, and I just got the galleys back to proof.  Galleys comprise the final layout of the book with the images, and they are to writers what a walk-around is to a pilot for a plane. We’re checking out the final product before we let it fly.  I have about a week to read them over, look for any mistakes, and then send a note back to the publishers giving them the go-ahead to put it into print (both paper and electronic).

The publisher had a pretty specific set of topics in mind that they wanted me to cover, although I did get to select many of them. The idea behind the book is NOT to give you a graduate (or even undergraduate) education in astronomy, but to acquaint the reader with astronomy topics in a “getting to know you” kind of way.

You’d think it would be easy to do this. But, actually, working out ways to write “layperson” explanations of black holes and wormholes and solar storms and planetary evolution and stellar birth and death and many, many other topics is fairly complex. And, sandwich it all into a 1,000-1500 words per topic, and you can see the challenge.

At the end of writing the book (I had about a month and a half to do it — that’s life in the publishing lane, folks), I felt as if I’d been waltzing with stars, planets, galaxies, and clusters. I’ve been studying and writing about astronomy for a long time, sometimes in very great depth, and one of  the great joys is bringing complex topics to people and having them really grasp the processes and events that shape our cosmos. I’ve done it for a long time in documentary shows. Doing it for a book that will speak to all levels of reader, and act as their first guide t0 the cosmos is heady.  And so, here I sit, galleys in front of me, ready to dive back in and see how it worked out.  I’ll keep you posted!

 

astronomy, light pollution

What if We Couldn’t See the Stars?

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Help GLOBE at Night 2013 Count the Stars

What is your life without the stars? Think about it? What if you couldn’t see the stars?   Can you step outside at night and see the Milky Way? Is your view hindered by light pollution? Can you see any stars from your home? For many people, particularly in large cities, the answers to those last two questions are abysmal: “Yes, light pollution affects my view of the sky” and “I can see only a few stars in the sky at night.”  It’s a worldwide problem, and with the astronauts’ abilities to send back pictures of Earth almost real-time, we can really see what our planet looks like as we light up outer space.

The good folks at the GLOBE at Night campaign want to know what your skies look like. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program that encourages citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky. During five select sets of dates in 2013, you can help the project by matching the  appearance of a constellation (Orion or Leo in the northern hemisphere, and Orion and Crux in the southern hemisphere) with seven star charts of progressively fainter stars (www.globeatnight.org/observe_magnitude_orion.html).Then, you submit your findings to the www.globeatnight.org/webapp/ , providing the date, time and location of your observations. You can submit from your iphone or computer, and your data will help make an  interactive map of all worldwide observations (www.globeatnight.org/map/). Over the past 7 years of 10-day campaigns, people in 115 countries have contributed more than 83,000 measurements, making GLOBE at Night the most popular, light pollution citizen-science campaign to date (www.globeatnight.org/analyze.html). The GLOBE at Night website is easy to use, comprehensive, and holds an abundance of background information (www.globeatnight.org/learn.html and www.globeatnight.org/observe.html). Guides, activities, one-page flyers and postcards advertising the campaign are available at www.globeatnight.org/pdf/. Through GLOBE at Night, students, teachers, parents and community members are amassing a data set from which they can explore the nature of light pollution locally and across the globe. The remaining GLOBE at Night campaigns in 2013 are: March 3 – 12, March 31 – April 9, and April 29 – May 8. Make a difference and join the GLOBE at Night campaign!

In other night sky light-pollution news, last week we (a team comprising Loch Ness Productions and the International Dark-SkyAssociation) released a video called Losing the Dark. It presents the issues related to light pollution and some easy-to-implement solutions to the problem. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below.  If you’re a planetarium person, you can get this video for your dome free of charge at the Loch Ness Productions Losing the Dark Web page. If you’re an educator, public speaker, outreach specialist, or dark-sky advocate, you can get a flat-screen HD version of the video at the International Dark-Sky Association’s Losing the Dark page.  It’s been a major hit so far, and we’d like to see it get out to as many folks as possible. Help spread the word about mitigating light pollution!