Placebo Effect
Every April I scramble (like all other AWB astronomers) to make plans to jump in to GAM. The longer I am involved with AWB, the more I appreciate the “placebo effect” I experience every year. A Placebo by definition is a substance given that evokes a sense of well being for an ailment – but it does not have any true medicinal qualities and does not cure. These placebos are used quite frequently in the medical industry to check the viability of a drug during their testing process. When I dug deeper, I found the word deception, for it said...
Branching out with Public Science: From IYA to IYL
The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA) forever changed the way I view astronomy and science outreach projects. It helped me picture outreach much more broadly. It brought community organizers to the forefront in a new sort of outreach coalition that I still rely on today, connected me with a vast network of talented amateur astronomers, outreach practitioners and scientists around the world, and even led to the creation of a new categorization of outreach events: public science. After IYA, my colleagues at the Chandra X-ray Center and I came up with term "public science" to legitimize this type of...
Favourite Sky Observation Sites in the Indian Himalayas
My first experience of an observatory was quite a memorable and pleasant one. A few budding amateur astronomers arrived at the Nainital Observatory in the Himalayan foothills, quite unannounced on a very wintery morning. Having travelled overnight from New Delhi we were tremendously excited at the prospect of looking at a large – One Metre telescope at the Uttar Pradesh State Observatory. Despite being unannounced, we were made quite welcome. We were given a tour of the entire facility, shown all large and small telescopes in every nook and corner, including the old Baker-Nunn satellite camera. Alas it was a...
The Search for Exomoons
Our Moon is responsible for the tides in the Earth’s oceans and for the magnificent Solar and Lunar eclipses that we see from Earth. Our Moon does not have an atmosphere or oceans, and life is not possible there. But what about other the other moons in and beyond our Solar System? Moons in our Solar System A moon is natural satellite of a planet that is larger than roughly ten kilometers. Approximately 400 bodies in our Solar System are classified as moons. Some are larger than the Earth’s moon, while most are just oversized rocks. The seven largest natural...
Our Place in the Universe
We go about our daily routines without paying much attention to other things. At night we’re watching whatever is in the places that are lit. Few look up to admire the night sky and ponder our place in the Universe, especially in cities where the sight is less than spectacular. We stay focused on what we’re doing in our own personal universe – a tiny part of a small planet in one of billions of galaxies. Even those who marvel at a starlit sky don’t always recognize what they’re seeing. Without something to give a sense of distance and depth,...
