User talk:Mark Seibold

Astronomy and the Universe; It is Time to Open the Pandora’s Box. ..

Or how I realized that the universe is moving at the speed of light and I stopped worrying about missing the boat.

The science subject and study of astronomy is highly misunderstood by the general public. More and more it is misinterpreted as something only accessible to systems and institutions of higher academic education or something that is the responsibility of the government. By some it is best perceived as distant and hard to reach and that a college degree in physics is needed to enjoy observational astronomy. Furthermore, space travel in recent years and the failures of NASA rockets and other equipment has hampered the interest in astronomy. Many believe that our attention is better focused on the ground and in saving the planet earth.

The main modern instrument of astronomy, the reflector telescope invented by Isaac Newton in about 1630, elaborated from the earlier instruments of Galileo just a few years before, the refractor telescope, have been mistakenly thought of as hobby shop or department store toys for children. Much of the general public, even today in the highly technologically advanced society in the United States believes that this is either a passive hobby for science nerds, the rich with idle time or restricted to government studies or only applicable to space exploration such as the endeavors of NASA and space flight. In actuality, it is all relative.

Many amateur astronomers spend hours under the starry dome of the night sky, some in their backyards with sophisticated telescopes costing many thousands of dollars, linked to electronic computers and cameras, as they document their observations. Much of the American public has never had the chance to observe through a moderate or large telescope and thus completely unaware of what the night sky has available to discover. Many are introduced accidentally to a neighbor who invites them to view say the moon or a large planet such as Jupiter or Saturn for the first time out an a community sidewalk or a ‘star party event’ through a modest instrument. This is often done within local cities astronomy club members during the summer months. First time observers are often stunned and amazed as to what they will discover. The beautiful textured and cratered lunar surface of the moon in stark detail, the cloud belts of Jupiter and its Galilean moons or one of the most beautiful sights to behold, the rings of Saturn.

What’s worse, is that much of our population resides within inner city street lights and will never get out of town to a location where avid amateur astronomers congregate to observe distant galaxies, star clusters and gaseous nebulas, invisible within the confines of city light pollution. Conversely, this is what is in dire need of our education systems today, as administrators argue as to what to do to improve the classroom environment. I have been asked to speak at international universities and locally across the US continent when I provided sidewalk astronomy through a unique solar telescope for the public while on a solo 10,000 mile road trip within one month traversing into the eastern Canada seaboard. The public was in awe and teachers were begging me to bring this large expensive optical instrument to their schools for their students. The sun appears as a flaming ball of lava, a glowing orange disc of solar flares, hydrogen gases undulating in constant dynamism. Passersby on the street comment, dialogs form between strangers. There is talk of Einstein, primal soup and cosmic ancestry. This is what is important in getting students out of the box of the classroom environment and closer to nature. Many are not aware that these instruments are available to schools and science institutions or that most large metropolitan cities in the US have large astronomy clubs with many knowledgeable members willing to share these instruments with the local community.

What may have been the modern day start of this, was a aging California monk in San Francisco in the late 1960’s named John Dobson. As written by Timothy Ferris, one of the most respected writers of science and more so on astronomy, Ferris is the Dean of Astronomy at Cal Tech at Berkeley, California, Speaking of Dobson in his book, Seeing in The Dark: Poverty was habit and became the mother of his invention. Dobson was in a monastery in San Francisco for many years, after working on the atom bomb project as a chemist/ physicist during World War II. Dobson began building large crude reflector telescopes from scrap parts that he scavenged from shipyards in the Bay Area. He took the telescopes into the streets of San Francisco at night, sharing the night sky with the public in the streets. He was eventually kicked out of the monastery for being AWOL. He started the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers and now most major cities in the US and abroad, have large astronomy clubs with many amateurs building larger and better constructed precision optical telescopes than can be purchased commercially. This is primarily because of John Dobson showing the public that it can be done by yourself with a minimum of materials in the late 1960’s. Dobson still teaches his telescope building classes across the continent and is in high demand for his cosmology lectures at universities. I took John to many schools in the Portland Oregon area. We performed solar observing and I allowed him to lecture to students and open their minds outside of the usual classroom environment. The New York Times has just announced a new documentary film about Dobson. July 6, 2005.
 * Link to NY Times story; new film about John Dobson: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/movies/06side.html?pagewanted=print

to be continued : (there is much news in the papers and abroad overseas that I appeared in as I performed a sidewalk astronomy venture similar to Dobson’s over the past 5 years and will include it in this article for the future . . . – Mark Seibold; July 2005