Date: October 11, 2011
Title: Technology Boosts Astronomy Education and Outreach
Podcaster: Ryan Marciniak
Organization: Astronomy in Action
Link: www.astronomyinaction.com
Description: Ryan Marciniak talks about how technology has changed the way we teach astronomy and how it has given a huge boost to Astronomy outreach. Technologies such as digital projection, video rendering, and image processing are opening the eyes of the public and connecting Astronomy outreach to the social age.
Bio: Ryan Marciniak was born in Toronto and raised in the countryside north of the city. Seeing the night skies away from city lights and an eclipse at age 8 sparked his interest in Space, and he hasn’t looked back all the way through his Masters of Science in Astronomy. Nowadays Ryan is performing traveling Astronomy shows at schools, parties, and community fairs using an inflatable planetarium dome with his company Astronomy in Action, living his dream of exploring the world and teaching kids of all ages about Astronomy.
Sponsor: This episode of “365 Days Of Astronomy” has been sponsored by — NO ONE. We still need sponsors for many days in 2011, so please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.
Transcript:
1. Intro and how technology is allowing people to experience astronomy with less imagination
Greetings from Toronto, Canada! You’re listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast for October 11th, 2011 – The benefit of Technology to Astronomy education and outreach. My name is Ryan Marciniak and I’m here to talk about how new technology and media are generating interest in Astronomy not from the eyepiece of a telescope, but from a movie, photograph, or even a 3D trip through space itself.
I want to start with a quote by the great Astronomer and Writer Carl Sagan, he said “When you make the finding yourself, even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light, you’ll never forget it.” This is true of generating public interest in astronomy, its about giving people a chance to discover the universe on their own, and new technology makes it a lot easier to see the light.
Once upon a time the only way to enjoy the night sky was to crane your neck upwards for hours at a time and curse every cloud that comes your way as you try and make sense of it all. Even though this is still an enjoyable pursuit of backyard astronomers across the globe (myself included), the majority of people have other priorities in life, and would likely get their Astronomy fix from watching videos of the moon landings, shuttle launches, reading books and magazines, or even from science fiction tv shows.
Once in awhile you would hear of a new discovery on the evening news and you’d try and take a look outside to see what the fuss was about. I remember seeing the perseid meteor shower when I was 13 and our local news station did a short segment on it. Even though I had been preparing to spend the night camping in the backyard to see it , some of my friends and family didn’t even know about the shower until they saw the news a few days before, and a few of them ended up sitting outside with me for awhile to watch it.
Nowadays, with the introduction of social media and high definition images, video, and audio – Astronomy is becoming a much more accessible science, even in the daytime. With important discoveries making news on a weekly basis, Astronomy has never been so accessible to the public. Lately I’ve even had friends inform ME of new and interesting discoveries in Astronomy before I have a chance to hear about them myself. This is great because it means people are informed and interested.
2. High def projectors and simple powerpoint
With the introduction of digital projection and image processing, the simple black and white raw images taken by large telescopes are transformed into stunning color portraits with depth and contrast, bringing the universe to life on a huge bright screen, adding to the words of an enthused Astronomer. It wasn’t too long ago that Astronomy lectures or lessons were all done on overhead projectors, with little colour or character to the images. With the digital revolution came the capability to project beautiful colour images and text, and powerpoint adds so much to any lecture, even if the speaker is a little boring.
Connecting digital projectors to computers allows us to use Astronomy software as a teaching tool. By using software that can represent the night sky, we can use animations, speeding up time, and high quality images to illustrate the universe. To me the best part of all of this as an Astronomy educator is that you can have an audience guide the lecture. By asking people what they want to see and then discussing it and showing it to them on the projector screen, people feel like they are making the discovery themselves and taking the discussion in their own direction, which means they will never forget it.
3. Image processing
As for the photos, astronomical images could always be conjured up in the darkroom and some really stunning photos were put into books. The first astronomy book I ever had was called ‘the planets’ by Nigel Henbest, which was filled with great photos of the planets in our solar system from the first 30 years of planetary exploration – and I remember how quickly it opened my eyes to the universe. Just to see a color photograph of something so far away that I could never see in such detail with my own eyes was an enlightening experience.
With the creation of tools like photoshop it’s fairly easy to take raw images of distant object and add depth and stunning colour to them. Most pictures of galaxies and nebulae seen in the media are false colour portraits created by stacking raw black and white images.
I took a short seminar in graduate school on how to create these false colour portraits using real telescopic images. It felt a lot like my old 9th grade art class from high school, talking about the colour wheel and complementary colours and such. We learned that the best way to bring out detail in stacking astronomical images was to take several images of the same object in different wavelength bands, and add different colours to them. The different wavelength bands emphasized different features in the objects, so the result when stacking the coloured images was that you really felt the image had depth to it.
It was also interesting that by applying a different set of colours to the same image you could give it a completely different feel or bring different features to the forefront.
Today we see these images all over the place. It seems like every NASA news story is combined with a false colour image or an artist’s rendering. It really satisfies the visual people on the planet, myself included.
4. 3D Rendering and video editing
In the past few years 3D video has become the hot new technology for digital media. This past summer I attended the 3D theatre at the origins institute at McMaster University, my old stomping ground. It was like going to the theatre to watch any other 3D movie; you put on those stylish but uncomfortable 3D glasses and you get to experience the movie in full high definition 3D. The visuals were incredible. To see the solar system with planets orbiting around the sun in 3D – I could almost grab Neptune as it passed by. To see what distant worlds might look like and to experience Space as if I was flying through it at 1000 times the speed of light definitely added to my ever growing enthusiasm for Astronomy.
Now as an astronomer myself the content of the show was important to me and very enjoyable, but to my friends, a group of newly christened astronomy enthusiasts, the visuals were awe-inspiring. To get a feel of the size and depth of the universe was the spark they needed to grow their interest – and I think this is true of the majority of public viewers. The visuals give them a true feel for what the universe looks like, when they may not have enough of an interest to look through a telescope on their own. These movies are starting to be made by computational astronomers around the world who are taking visualizations of their research to the next level.
5. Planetarium technology
The most incredible leap forward in Astronomy education and outreach is the use of digital planetariums. Planetariums have been around for decades, but digital systems are starting to become much more common across the globe.
For me there is no greater feeling in the world then lying underneath a night sky full of stars far away from city lights, just staring into the infinite. The use of planetarium projectors makes this scenario a lot more accessible to the public, and it can be done at any time of day. A dark dome with stars projected onto a spherical ceiling gives you that incredible feeling, and for someone experiencing it for the first time, they will never forget it.
Domes from 20 years ago were simple but effective. Using a small light surrounded by a dark cylinder with holes in it would project a representation of the night sky onto the ceiling of a round room. The dark dome and dim stars give a great representation of the real night sky, and how it takes a few minutes for our eyes to adjust to the darkness and see all the stars. The projector could also be set with the audience’s location on the planet, so that they would see the same sky as they would on a clear night outside of the dome. Finally, the projectors would have a little motor so that you could move the view of the sky forward or backward in time, to illustrate the rotation of the Earth.
With the advent of digital planetarium technology, it’s now possible to project far more than the night sky on the ceiling of a planetarium. Constellation shapes can be outlined, planets can be labelled, galaxies can be visited, and you can even see what Earth looks like from different planets. Some organizations even produce recorded shows on different topics that don’t even require a presenter. The projections are set and the audio recorded beforehand, so that an audience can see an entire pre-recorded show while they sit back and relax. There are even companies that produce full dome movies specifically for use in digital planetariums, and they can really add to the entire experience.
So whether you’re looking through a telescope, watching a 3D movie, or lying back in a comfy planetarium chair, the possibilities are endless for those looking to experience the universe. Leaps in technology and media allow us to hear about new developments in Astronomy as they happen, and Astronomers are getting the word out about how great their job is. Astronomy outreach continues to surge forward and the next generation of technology is making its way into the classroom. I’m really looking forward to see what we come up with over the next few years.
7. Finale
Well that’s all the time we have today, so my final message is go out and enjoy a planetarium show or a 3D film, and explore astronomy in a whole new way. I’m Ryan Marciniak and this is 365 days of Astronomy, thanks for listening and keep your eyes to the skies.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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