ASTRONOMY COMMUNICATION Volume II ASTROPHYSICS AND SPACE SCIENCE LIBRARY VOLUME 290 EDITORIAL BOARD Chairman W.B. BURTON,National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A. ([email protected]); University of Leiden, The Netherlands ([email protected]) Executive Committee J. M. E. KUIJPERS, Faculty of Science, Nijmegen, The Netherlands E. P. J. VAN DEN HEUVEL, Astronomical Institute, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands H. VAN DER LAAN, Astronomical Institute, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands MEMBERS I. APPENZELLER, Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl, Germany J. N. BAHCALL, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A. F. BERTOLA, Universitá di Padova, Italy J. P. CASSINELLI, University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A. C. J. CESARSKY, Centre d'Etudes de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France O. ENGVOLD, Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, Norway R. McCRAY, University of Colorado, JILA, Boulder, U.S.A. P. G. MURDIN, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, U.K. F. PACINI, Istituto Astronomia Arcetri, Firenze, Italy V. RADHAKRISHNAN, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India K. SATO, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan F. H. SHU, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. B. V. SOMOV, Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Russia R. A. SUNYAEV, Space Research Institute, Moscow, Russia Y. TANAKA, Institute of Space & Astronautical Science, Kanagawa, Japan S. TREMAINE,CITA, Princeton University, U.S.A. N. O. WEISS, University of Cambridge, U.K. ASTRONOMY COMMUNICATION Edited by ANDRÉ HECK Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, France and CLAUS MADSEN European Southern Observatory, Germany SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-6307-6 ISBN 978-94-017-0801-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0801-2 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Table of Contents • Foreword (H.A. Abt/KPNO) vii • Editorial (Editors) 1 • Public Communication of Astronomy (C. Madsen & R.M. West/ESO) 3 • Communicating Astronomy to the Media (S.P. Maran/NASA GSFC et al.) 19 • The Public Communication of Science and Technology and International Networking 31 (P. Catapano/CERN et al.) • Science on Television (R. Taylor/York Films) 43 • Astronomy on Television (N. Henbest/Pioneer Prod.) 55 • Astronomy and Space Science in the European Print Media (C. Madsen/ESO) 67 • 115 Years of Communicating Astronomy: Education and Outreach at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 121 (A. Fraknoi/Foothill Coll. & ASP) • The Hubble Space Telescope Education and Outreach Program (I. Griffin/STScI) 139 • Doing it Without Electrons: Innovative Resources for Promoting Astronomy and Science in a Developing Country 157 (C. Rijsdijk/SAAO) vi • The EAAE: Promoting Astronomy Education in Europe 177 (F. Wagner & R.M. Ros/EAAE) • Astronomy Education in Europe: Studies Among Teachers and High-School Students 189 (A. Bacher/Univ. Innsbruck) • Astronomy Professional Communication (A. Heck/Strasbourg Obs.) 203 • Writing a Clear and Engaging Paper for All Astronomers (L. Sage/Nature) 221 FOREWORD Astronomyhasalwaysbeenoneoftheeasiestofthesciencestoconveyto the public. That is partly because it produces spectacular pictures that can be explained (at least in part) and admired, partly because understanding of astronomy usually does not depend upon a knowledge of a complex clas- sification system or esoteric terminology, and partly because its extremes in distances and times challenge our imagination and philosophies. Most scientists enjoy sharing with others the discoveries made by them- selves and their colleagues. The primary purpose of scientific research is to discover, to learn, and to understand. When we succeed, we enjoy shar- ing that understanding. Education is most pleasurable when our audience wishes to learn and we have something important to convey. Afieldthatdoesnotcommunicateeffectivelywiththepublicsoonlooses its interest and support. Author Andr´e Heck explains the many different ways in which professional communication now occurs while Leslie Sage explains how such communication should be done. Astronomy done with spacecraft and large equipment is very expensive and the funds for those ultimately come from the public. The cost of astronomy prorated over the number of research astronomers is perhaps the highest in all the sciences. If astronomers do not share their results with the public, they will loose its support. However, for most astronomers the desire to share and educate dominates over the pragmatic need to win public support. With the advent of new communication techniques (television, videos, CDs, DVDs, animation, simulations) we have new methods to communi- cate, in addition to the conventional ones of the printed and spoken word. Authors Raili Taylor and Nigel Henbest explain the practical advantages, difficulties, and huge expenses of astronomy explained on television, while Claus Madsen gives extensive statistics regarding the effectiveness of com- munication in print. Teachersarelearningthatyoungpeoplehavechangedandthatthecon- ventionalmethodof50-minutelecturesisoftennoteffective.Thenewtech- niquesinvolvehands-onexperiments,interactivecomputers,groupprojects, viii open discussions, and other approaches yet to be developed, rather than passiveattentiontolecturers.ClausMadsenandRichardWestintheopen- ingchapter,StephenMaranandPaolaCatapanoet al.inthefollowingones discuss effective communication techniques with the public. Astronomy is an ideal science to illustrate the “scientific method.” As primarily an observational, rather than experimental, science, astronomy can chartthepathsfromtheassumptionsmade,theobservationscollected, and the logical reasoning toward the derived conclusions. It is logic of sci- ence and the testing of claimed results that should be used to show the fallacy of superstition. While we can guess how much more superstition would exist if the public did not engage in logical thinking part of the time, wehavenoteliminatedastrology,andfortune-tellersarestillbelievedwhose success rates are no higher than own guesses. Many primitive societies, un- like ours, are heavily controlled by superstition. On the one hand we need to teach logical thinking to more people and on the other hand we need to learn new ways to combat superstition. Recent discoveries in astronomy have been spectacular, such as the X- rays and γ-ray bursts, gravitational lensing, missing mass, 1020eV parti- cles, and galaxy-sized jets. Nevertheless, the future is likely to bring even stranger effects. We hear of vacuum energy that exceeds that of luminous energy, of (invisible) magnetic fields that dominate over kinetic energy, and possible universes outside our own. If we do not learn to communicate ef- fectively regarding things that we can see, we will have real troubles to communicate convincingly about invisible objects. Authors Fernand Wagner and Rosa Ros, as well as Arntraud Bacher, havesurveyedtheteachingofastronomyinEurope,providingstatisticsthat are sometimes surprising. But the shocking description by Case Rijsdijk of the primitive state of astronomy education and the lack of resources and trained people in a developing country is heart-rending. It must currently be done without the electronic tools that we take for granted in the devel- oped countries. The task of bringing millions of people to the astronomical educational level of the average European or North American public will require herculean efforts and careful long-term planning. Amajorrecentchangeisthatevenorganizationsengagedinpureastro- nomical research have seen the need to engage in public education. For in- stance, NASA, which often refrained from spending money on non-mission oriented efforts, is now spending millions of dollars per year on public ed- ucation. Andrew Fraknoi and Ian Griffin document how two organizations (the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the Space Telescope Science Institute, respectively) have made large efforts toward public education. Astronomy has benefited by the participation of amateurs in original research. The field is somewhat unique in the extent of that participation. Foreword ix Organizations such as the Astronomical Society of the Pacific divide their efforts among public education, aiding amateurs, and serving the profes- sionals. People have said that one reason for astronomy’s popularity is that it has not been linked with nuclear bombs, environmental pollution, po- litically incorrect research, or the military, as have some other sciences. However astronomical results have challenged our religious and tribal con- cepts of the universe. It must be considered a credit to astronomers that astronomical cosmology, unlike when Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno were silenced, is now accepted by most religions. Even the fundamentalist religions do not blanch at the possibility that other planets exist and might beinhabited.Althoughastronomyhasprofitedfromfinancialandtechnical military support and the military have used astronomical goals to justify its experiments with rockets, the public does not connect astronomy with the military. It is now appropriate that a volume of essays be devoted entirely to the communication among professional astronomersand with thepublic. Many of the topics discussed in this set of volumes have not been presented in the astronomical literature. I congratulate Editors Andr´e Heck and Claus Madsen for seeing the need to present those topics and for soliciting these essays. Helmut A. Abt Kitt Peak National Observatory February 2003. EDITORIAL Communicating is one of the basic processes of life. Asastronomers,wecommunicateallthetime,withcolleaguesofcourse, but also with managers and administrators, with decision makers and tak- ers, with social representatives, with the news media, and with the society at large including our family, our friends and amateur astronomers. Edu- cation is naturally part of the process. And we communicate nowadays via a large variety of means: voice and print, phone and fax, as well as via the now omnipresent electronic tools, both active (e-mail) and passive (web), in addition to the various graphical arts including movies, videos, DVDs and so on. A number of books and papers have already been devoted to science- related communication in general. Is communication of astronomy different from what it is in other communities? Basically not, with perhaps two significant differences though: the astronomy community is rather compact andwellorganizedworld-wide;astronomyhaspenetratedthegeneralpublic remarkablywellwithanextensivenetworkofassociationsandorganizations of aficionados all over the world. Accessorily,asaresultofthehugeamountofdataaccumulated,butalso by necessity for their extensive international collaborations, astronomers have been pioneering the development of distributed resources, electronic communicationsandnetworkscoupledtoadvancedmethodologiesandtech- nologies often much before they become of common world-wide usage. Mostastronomershaveneverbeentrainedtocommunicateoptimally,ei- therorally(e.g.professionalcommunicationsandlobbying),inwriting(e.g. professional ‘papers’) or graphically (e.g. web sites). Dealing adequately with the news media can be a perilous exercise, not only for the individu- als involved, but also, beyond them, for their institutions and even for the whole astronomy community itself. This book is filling a gap in the astronomy-related literature by provid- ingasetofchaptersnotonlyofdirectinteresttoastronomycommunication, but also well beyond it. 1 A. Heck and C. Madsen (eds.), Astronomy Communication, 1-2. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers..