Comments on: Busing in astronomy

By: Sharkey

Sharkey — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:34:12 +0000

@Daniel Fischer: Thanks for the details. I’ve signed up for the Galileoscope updates, but I may have to look at something a little more traditional for the kids…

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:47:41 +0000

Sunlight reflected by the Earth into space contains imprints of life on our planet …

At the risk of sounding stupid, because I am probably missing something obvious … could someone please elaborate on the above?

Our atmosphere is roughly 20% oxygen. There is pretty much no known stable inorganic system that could keep that much oxygen floating freely in the atmosphere. It’s been said that if we ever take a spectroscopic analysis of a planetary atmosphere and find it contains a significant amount of oxygen, that would be very strong evidence for life on that planet.

By: CW

CW — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:59:27 +0000

My only concern with something like this is that someone in the public or the media (they’re both hopelessly astronomically illiterate) will take one look at such a sign and run with something like “The Earth is coming to a standstill!!”–and that that’s all we’ll hear about it for a while.

I’m not sure you need to be concerned about that, but rather, that most people will probably read that and think ‘who cares?’

By: Nemo

Nemo — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:51:07 +0000

This reminds me — there was something (uninformative) on the TV news last night about the possibility of abolishing the leap second. Phil, do you know anything about that?

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:45:53 +0000

By: Daniel Fischer

Daniel Fischer — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:31:18 +0000

@Sharkey: You will be able to place orders for the much delayed Galileoscope later this month on its website, but only a few 100,000 will become available worldwide during 2009 and only starting in summer, once could learn at a recent press conference. So the idea is now to have, say, a dozen students share one instrument - they are more teaching tools than actual astronomical instruments anyway - or have them "rotate" between schools.

By: Will. M

Will. M — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:35:01 +0000

I think buses are fine, but capture a limited audience here in Carland America. I have a better idea: why not put a daily astronomy factioid in every newspaper in the country, right opposite the woo of the astrology du jour, perhaps? Even better, try to get the weather person at as many television stations in the country, to read a three or four line blurb about an astronomical event of the day/week. And these data bits should be attention-getting, too, to compete for the limited attention span much of the public seems to have. Perhaps in a year’s worth of exposure, albiet on a limited daily basis, more than a few folks could become interested in the sky above.
I wonder how much free advertising the ISP’s might give to this idea, especially for the new internet phones, i-pods, blackberry devices and such. The daily astronomy data download: quick, terse and fascinating…