Filed under: People Looking at the Stars | Tags: 2009, Astronomy, Galileo, Galileoscope, International Year of Astronomy, planets, stars
Thanks to this week’s Special Guest Author, Iain B. (my husband)
Galileo Galilei
2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (IYA), but not many people seem to know that… at least not yet.
This week will see the official launch of the IYA at an opening ceremony in Paris, France. I’m sure there will be grandiose projects such as expensive space probes doing marvellous things around alien worlds, and lots of pretty pictures on the news taken from observatories in exotic locations such as Tenerife and Hawaii (hmm, and how is it that the big telescopes always seem to be located at beautiful holiday destinations? Nice coincidence.)
But that’s not what I want to talk about here. No, I think the real success story of IYA2009 will be the Galileoscope.
2009 was chosen for the IYA because it marks the 400th anniversary of the day one Italian guy (Galileo) decided to take a pair of reading glasses (spectacles) and cut them up to make a special “looking glass” – then pointed it upward in search of God in the heavens. Well, he didn’t find God; but what he did find were several planets, including one that came with peculiar ears attached (Saturn and its rings.) Perhaps finding these celestial bodies–not the ones he had been looking for–hadn’t been his original intention. But it did lead to his assertion that, contrary to popular thought, the Earth circled around the Sun (and not vice versa), which really rankled the Pope at the time (Galileo was eventually placed under house arrest for his “heretical” views) and assured him a place in the history books.
Oh, of course Galileo wasn’t really the first to make or use a telescope; we’ll conveniently ignore the fact that a patent was filed in the Netherlands more than a decade previously. But every science needs a celebrity, so Galileo fits the role as well as anyone.
So yes, in 2009 we will celebrate his momentous act – not making a telescope or even finding the planets – no, the real celebration is the pivotal moment when Man was first able to look beyond the limits of his natural eyesight, and open his mind the great expanse of the universe.
It’s fitting, then, on this auspicious anniversary of its creation, that the Galileoscope has been reinvented. Only this time it’s not a crude telescope that would take weeks to build and provide only a dim image of the cosmos. No, this time it’s a do-it-yourself $20 kit that any school child can use to learn the basics of optics and astronomy. Once assembled, it is this inexpensive tool that has the potential to really change the world, by seeding an entire generation with the technology to look beyond themselves–beyond our small planet– at a time when the world perhaps needs it more than ever.
Now that’s something really worth a celebration.
Filed under: People Looking at the Stars | Tags: Astronomy, Barbados, Harry Bayley Observatory, stargazing, telescope
A few photos from our trip to the Harry Bayley Observatory in Barbados; that's my husband looking through the telescope, and me with observatory volunteers/amateur astronomers Bill Sutherland and Clennell Redmon.
After a difficult few weeks preparing for a research paper, I have been in a metaphorical-intellectual gutter, my mind filled with the flotsam and jetsam of reading about Irish print culture in the 16th Century. And I was a bit desperate about writing this blog, because I am fighting a paper deadline that is a week away, and haven’t been able to focus on the interesting blog topics that I’d promised you a few weeks ago. (There’s one New Year’s resolution down the toilet. Sorry, folks.)
Today, I hit a new low by announcing I was going to take a look at “bad hairstyles from the Golden Globes.” I thought I had lost my blogging mojo. And I’ve been avoiding writing the posts because I just didn’t want to. As we are just a few days before the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States, the topic just didn’t feel aspirational enough–bad hair isn’t compelling to me at the moment (except as it might relate to 16th Century monastic scribes in Ireland, or looking at myself in the mirror.)
But then, on a whim, I asked my marvelous husband if he would guest author my blog for me this week. Yes, the request is a little last minute, not to mention late, but I’m delighted to say that he’s accepted. (Thanks, honey.)
And talk about aspirational: his topic for the week is going to be astronomy–people who are “looking at the stars” (to borrow from that excellent phrase from Oscar Wilde quoted in the title of this post.) Astronomy has lately become a hobby of my husband’s–as well as for me, by association–and was largely inspired by our visit to the Harry Bayley Observatory in Barbados this past May, where we got to see some fairly amazing things in the cosmos, courtesy of local observatory volunteers and amateur astronomers Bill Sutherland and Clennell Redmon. We have since become members of the Barbados Astronomical Society (for real!)
Hopefully these posts inspire you to do a little stargazing, too.
