So, what are professional astronomers actually doing?

The belief of the general public probably still is something like: "Astronomers are gazing into the stars with their telescopes every night, and in case the weather is bad, they are forced to do nothing and are very unhappy." Of course, that is not true. Sometimes we astronomers even get mixed up with meteorologists. Why is the public image of astronomers still so ancient? Nobody believes that physicists still throw stones of different weight from towers, or that biologists are chasing after frogs and butterflies in the fields and woods.

One reason might be that the modern research facilities of astronomers, the observatories, are usually placed on remote mountaintops and/or in the desert, far away and well-hidden from the "general public". As an example, see the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama desert in Chile, or the Keck Telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii. This is even more true for astronomical satellites. The astronomical institutes in the cities, where the research is actually happening, are much less prominent buildings than large observatories and are mostly left unnoticed by passers-by. Well, we cannot do anything about that, because there are very good reasons to build telescopes on remote mountain tops rather than close to big cities (e.g. better weather conditions, less light pollution, etc.).

A second reason might be that in the past maybe indeed too little outreach has been done by the astronomers. If that were true, it is something we want to change with this unique opportunity of IYA2009!

There are, however, two occasions when also professional astronomers are gazing into the stars.

The first one is during outreach activities such as science weeks, nights of open doors, etc. On these occasions, the word "public viewing" takes on another meaning... On the one hand, astronomers want to show to the public what kind of work and research they are doing. The star gazing activity just serves as an "appetizer". On the other hand, the stargazing may actually foster the ancient image of astronomers. There are always two sides of the coin...

The second occasion is during the spare time to just enjoy the calm and dark night sky. Many professional astronomers actually started out as amateur astronomers (I am one of those!). Also for professional astronomers, it is just incredibly beautiful to look at the starry night sky! To see so many stars in the sky excites your imagination like nothing else in the world. You start asking yourself questions like: How do all these other worlds look like? How are the planets like, circling around these other stars? How would it be like walking on one of Jupiter's moons? Images of childhood autumn evenings come to life...

I realise that I haven't actually answered the introductory question. This will be made good for in the next post!

Read you soon,
Stefan