Four
hundred-year-old light from the Pleiades star cluster will be used early this
year to initiate a virtual ribbon-cutting in the Second Life online community for
the International Year of Astronomy — aimed at bringing astronomy to more of
the general public.
The initiative
also commemorates the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first
telescope observations of the night sky. It features numerous programs
aimed at making astronomy more accessible, notably a plan to churn out thousands
of low-cost, high-quality telescopes
to let ordinary citizens, particularly children, have their own first peak at
the heavens.
"It's
basically a full court press to improve scientific literacy," said Stephen
Pompea, manager of Science Education at the National Optical Astronomy
Observatory (NOAO) and U.S. project director for IYA2009, during a press
conference last month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union
in San Francisco.
Cheap
telescopes
The U.S.
IYA2009 opening ceremony is set for Jan. 6 in Long Beach, Calif., at the winter
meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The virtual
ribbon-cutting will be initiated using light from the Pleiades star cluster
sent over the Web from the Cincinnati Observatory, via the world's oldest
telescope still in nightly use by the general public.
Light from
the famous star cluster (also known as the "Seven Sisters") takes about
400 years to reach Earth. Therefore, the photons of light to be viewed on Jan.
6 would have been emitted around the time Galileo
first looked through his telescope to see — among other things — mountains and craters on the moon,
the four biggest moons of Jupiter, and countless faint stars in the Pleiades
invisible to the unaided eye.
Pompea and
other members of the IYA team worked with astronomers and optics experts to
design an affordable telescope that would be easily buildable for kids. The
optics had to be simple to put together, "but it had to provide a 'wow'
experience," Pompea said, allowing kids to see the rings of Saturn, for
example.
The scope
also had to be "an urban telescope," enabling city-dwelling
skywatchers to view bright objects despite the lack of dark skies. The result
is dubbed the Galileoscope, and features colorful plastic pieces that let kids
conduct optics experiments as they put the scope together. The telescopes will
be offered for $10 each, and Pompea says cheap tripods might be offered too.
"Our
particular goal is to get millions of people to look through a telescope for
the first time," Pompea said.
100
Hours of Astronomy
IYA will
also feature "100 Hours of Astronomy" during the first week of April,
which will include live Web casts and observing events, as well as a
downloadable set of high-resolution astronomy images. There will also be 365
days of astronomy podcasting, and a science topic and celestial object designated
for each month (January's topic will be telescopes and space probes and its
object will be Venus).
The year
will also feature several so-called dark skies initiatives to draw attention to
the problem of light pollution,
which obscures all but the brightest night sky objects from the view of most
urban and suburban areas.
"In
another generation or so we will be inundated with light pollution," said Connie
Walker, also of the NOAO and leader of the U.S. and international IYA2009
working groups on dark-skies awareness, during the AGU press conference.
"The
good news is that the people, everyday people, can do something about this,"
Walker said, including participating in programs where people can help
scientists measure the light pollution levels in their own community.
More than
135 countries are participating in IYA2009, which has been endorsed by the
United Nations, UNESCO and U.S. Congress.
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