A telescope for primary school children

How did I come into astronomy?

I was interested in nature and natural sciences quite early. This is not so surprising, as I grew up virtually in the middle of nature, far away from large cities. When I was ten years old, dinosaurs and everything ancient were very "in". I can remember that once I "tortured" my fellow schoolmates with a lengthy presentation about dinosaurs. How I then ended up exactly in astronomy is lost in history. Taking into account the dark countryside night sky, this is not entierely surprising. When I was twelve years old, I baught from my pocket money my first real telescope from a catalogue firm. Its optical and mechanical quality was not very high, that's why I tinkered on it quite a lot, without much success. Soon the telescope was in a state that it didn't make much fun anymore using it, and it would not create much joy if I gave it away to somebody else.


Then last year the JENAM (Joint European National Astronomy Meeting) 2008 took place in Vienna, Austria, where I could hear about the fantastic activities that were planned for the International Year of Astronomy 2009. There I had the idea that I could buy a new telescope and donate it to a school. Nowadays, you can get a telescope of fair quality and even larger size for the same amount of money that I then paid for my first telescope. Since now I work as postdoc at the univeristy and earn a decent salary, such an investment does not put a large financial burdon on me. But to which school should I donate the telescope? What suggests itself is of course the primary school that I used to attend at the age of six to ten, in my home village of Geboltskirchen in Austria. No sooner said than done! First, I sent an e-mail to the school principal to ask whether such a gift would actually cause much joy. Her answer was very positive! So I searched on the Internet for a suitable offer and found a refractor with 80 mm aperture and 900 mm focal length to be the best one. End of October last year the handing over of the telescope (and two books for beginners in astronomy) took place in the school. Here a foto of this event:






The children were very excited about the present. As a countermanoeuvre, they made drawings of their fantasy universes and gave them to me as a present. I pinned them up in my office, so that my colleagues, too, can admire the pieces of art:







Now the telescope also has to be used to show the wonders of the starry sky to the children. As an expert in that field, this is my job. That's why we made an appointment for end of April for a stargazing evening with the children. In this blog you will get too read about how the evening went!


Stay tuned,
Stefan

Second lecture of the IYA2009 series in Leuven

Hello!

Past Tuesday evening, March 3, the second talk of the lecture series that we are organising on occasion of IYA2009 took place in Leuven. The speaker was Professor Ewine van Dishoeck from the Sterrewacht Leiden in the Netherlands. The title of her talk was "From molecules to planets". Ewine is investigating the chemistry of interstellar clouds, out of which new stars and planetary systems are forming.


I didn't know Ewine personnaly before this presentation, nevertheless I have been told by a couple of people that she is not only an excellent scientist, but also a brilliant speaker. Possibly she is one of the most outstanding scientists of our time, at least in the field of astronomy. Accordingly, the audience numerously followed the invitation to her talk, the auditorium was overcrowded once again with about 230 people! By the way, the next talk of our series will be given by Ewine's husband, Prof. Tim de Zeeuw, current ESO director general. His talk will certainly take place in a larger auditorium!


Ewine concentrated in her talk on the immediate solar neighbourhood, i.e. about everything within the next 1000 lightyears. She dealt with the molecular clouds of our Milky Way Galaxy, which have orders of magnitude lower density of the best vacuum on Earth (~10000 particles per cubic centimetre) yet giving birth to new stellar systems, with the cemistry of these clouds (up to date about 130 different molecules have been identified in interstellar space), the formation of planets in gas and dust disks around young stars, the detection of planets around stars other than the sun (more than 300 such exoplanets have been found so far), and finally with the formation of life on these planets. Comets, which are something like the "remainder" of planet formation, probably play a major role in this last step, because in the bombardement by planetesimals of a young planet such as the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, the heat largly destroys organic molecules. The comets and dust originating from them gently rain down onto the surface of the young planet later on, to replenish the seeds of life. Finally, the so-called panspermia theory, as well as observatories and instruments for the observation of the chemistry of interstellar clouds were discussed. A number of interesting questions of the audience rounded off the talk.


Here are some pictures of the lecture:











The talk was certainly in itself the best advertisement of the lecture series one can imagine. One may expect that next time there will be a comparably large audience. Fortunately, the larger auditorium is reserved already!


Read you soon,

Stefan