The U.S. team for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) is excited and honored to contribute to the Year of Science as the featured topic for the month of July. Halfway through the year, IYA2009 has already proven to be the greatest-ever global celebration of astronomy and its many contributions to society and culture. Conceived to honor the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei in 1609, IYA2009 has evolved into far more.
Endorsed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), UNESCO, the United Nations, and the Congress of the United States, IYA2009 aims to stimulate worldwide interest in astronomy and science, especially among young people and in new audiences.
More than 140 countries and three-dozen space agencies are conducing public events, star parties, talks, image exhibitions and more, centered around a dozen primary "cornerstone" projects and a roughly equal amount of designated special projects with more niche audience appeal. All of them aim to use the awe-inspiring discoveries of astronomy to improve science literacy, and to foster a greater appreciation of scientific research as an invaluable shared resource for all nations.
The U.S. IYA2009 effort is based at the American Astronomical Society, and is supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA and private donations. This effort has directly involved more than 150 outreach professionals across North America, including Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Key partners include the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers.
The overall U.S. goal for IYA2009, supported by a resolution from the United States House of Representatives, is to offer an engaging astronomy experience to every person in the country, bolster existing outreach partnerships, and build new ones to sustain public interest beyond 2009.
The United States astronomy outreach community has a leadership role in six of the international cornerstone activities for IYA2009. Here's a look at two of them:
The Galileoscope
One obvious early goal outlined for IYA2009 was to get as many people as possible to look through a telescope, especially kids and others who had probably not done so before. Beyond our tremendous reliance on the community of dedicated amateur astronomers with their own telescopes (who have been the root of most of what we've accomplished in 2009), there was a desire expressed by many countries to have an inexpensive telescope to distribute by the thousands (or millions, on a good day!)
Given the number of "cheap" telescopes already available around the world in drugstores and department stores, it must just be a matter of finding best one and making copies like crazy, right? Wrong. None of the two-dozen kits that we examined and tested met our standards for quality, ease of use, and low cost. Knowing that any potential donors would expect a high-quality products, and not wanting to risk less than a "aha!" moment when using it, we decided that a whole new product was needed.
A small volunteer team led by Steve Pompea (National Optical Astronomy Observatory), Rick Fienberg (Philips Andover Academy and editor emeritus of Sky & Telescope magazine), and Doug Arion (Carthage College) worked with some of the leading optical engineers in the country to design a new high-quality, low-cost refracting telescope kit with a glass doublet primary lens, plastic eyepieces lenses, and several features designed to reduce stray light and maintain long eye relief at the eyepiece for ease of use by kids and seniors.
At a cost of only $15 each plus shipping (or $12.50 each if bought in lots over 100), the hard-plastic Galileoscope provides magnification of 25x in basic mode or 50x with a Barlow lens inserted, which will enable users to see the rings of Saturn--better than Galileo every could!
A third configuration allows the Galileoscope to be used in Keplerian mode, which provides an upright image but a small field of view, showing the challenge that Galileo faced in trying to sketch the Moon and other extended sky objects. Better yet, the Galileoscope features a standard inch-and-a-quarter eyepiece diameter, so anyone with their own eyepieces already can just plug them in.
More than 85,000 Galileoscopes are now in production, with the first ones arriving in eager peoples' hands as I write this column. The project is at a critical phase of determining whether we have enough additional orders to continue to keep production lines open longer through IYA2009 and--we hope--far beyond. So if this sounds interesting to you, check out www.galileoscope.org soon!
From Earth to the Universe
The awesome beauty of astronomical imagery is often the public's first entry point into learning more about the underlying science involved. Our general experience with this hook around the world led to a cornerstone project called "From Earth to the Universe."
The FETTU project and a wide variety of "consultants" selected 100 of the most beautiful astronomy images and concise captions to go with them, then made them available both online for use by anyone and in hardcopy exhibits of several flavors, from near-permanent, all-weather versions to a traveling version that will be crisscrossing North America well into 2010.
FETTU co-organizers Kimberly Kowal Arcand and Megan Watzke (Chandra Science Center) happily report that "half-way through the International Year of Astronomy 2009 the "From Earth to the Universe" (FETTU) project is going even better than we had hoped for." Over 60 countries in more than 250 separate locations are participating in FETTU. From tiny villages to the largest cities--with budgets large and small-- FETTU is being featured on every continent except Antarctica. For more on FETTU, see www.fromearthtotheuniverse.org/plan_visit.php.
If you happen to visit our nation's capital in July, look for a version of FETTU on the Mall near the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum--which has used the spirit of
IYA2009 to achieve a longtime dream to have a publicly accessible telescope on the Mall, coming this fall!
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