International Year of Astronomy kicks off with a bang
Changing a simple light bulb changed Adam Turner's outlook on the life, the universe and everything.
At first I thought I'd just blown a light bulb. Last night I'd simply replaced a low-powered 15W bulb in the lounge room with a 75W old school bulb and everything went black. Then I realised the rest of the house was dark. And the rest of the street. Even the street lights were out. On a hot January night when everyone's aircon was working overtime, it seems my extra 60 watts was enough to tip the suburb over the edge.
No TiVo. No network drive. No internet. Normally it would be panic stations but, on a clear summer night, I did what any self-respecting nerd would do in such a crisis. I set up my telescope.
This year marks exactly 400 years since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the skies - discovering the moons of Jupiter and helping to prove that the universe doesn't revolve around us. As a mark of respect, the United Nations has declared 2009 the International Year of Astronomy. Official festivities kick off this week in Paris and, to help start the celebrations, 17 radio telescopes in Australia, Asia, Europe and the Americas will track three quasars using something called "real-time Very Long Baseline Interferometry" - basically creating hi-res images by combining their data to simulate a telescope as large as the Earth. Sounds cool.
Of course not everyone has a national observatory in their backyard. The 2009 International Year of Astronomy aims to give 10 million people their first look through an astronomical telescope this year. The Galileoscope project offers an easy-to-assemble and easy-to-use 40mm telescope providing a similar view of the sky that Galileo enjoyed when he first studied the planets and their moons. The You are Galileo! project offers a year-long observation program following in Galileo's footsteps. There are also plenty of events planned around Australia.
I own a basic 70mm telescope, which I'm sure Galileo would have given his left nut for in 1609. Of course he didn't have to look through 400 years of smog and light pollution, so I suspect his view from Tuscany would still have been better than what I can glimpse from the post-Industrial Revolution suburbs. Still, for one night, my serendipitous blackout gave me a better view of the heavens. I think this year might be a good time to get away from the city lights one night, set up my telescope in the middle of nowhere and see what Galileo was so excited about.
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