Prime Time - a new venture

What really has me excited now is the pending start of a new venture - a year-long program called:"Prime Time: Observing Through the Astronmical year. " It's promoted on the Free Public Programs page, but the essentials are a small group will meet twice a month for observing and discussion/study sessions and in the process try to cover all the basics of finding stuff in the night sky and starting to get a handle on the awesome reality of what we are seeing.

I limited enrollment to 8 and it is now fully-enrolled and begins May 1. I couldn't be happier with the group that signed up. Here are the goals as I envision them, though we willprobably make adjustments to best fit things to the wants and needs of the participants.

Here's the working description sent out in an initial message to the group earlier this month.

Observational learning goals

1. Know by name and location the 15 brightest stars in our sky. Examples: Sirius, Vega, Deneb, etc. These will serve as starting points for finding anything else and the object will be to focus on one each month.

2. Be able to identify 12 major asterisms. Asterisms are meaningful patterns of bright stars each tied to a constellation - so on any given night you have several starting points for finding your way to other night sky objects that may not be so familiar. Examples: Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Sickle of Leo, Northern Cross (Cygnus the Swan), the Keystone of Hercules, etc.

3. View each of the "wanderers" – the five bright planets known to the ancients. Learn several key observational traits of each. Examples: The phases of Venus, the four Gallilean moons of Jupiter, etc.

4. Become comfortable with the changing face and position of the Moon and learn to appreciate its stark beauty and why some call it the "Smithsonian Institution" of the Solar System. Be able to identify the major “seas” and three-to-five meaningful craters that tell you something about the moon. Examples: Mares Crisium, Tranquility, and Imbrium; Craters Plato, Aristarchus, and Tycho.

5. Observe safely in the light of hydrogen alpha our nearest star, the Sun, noting sunspots, solar prominences, phages and filaments. Appreciate how dynamic the stars are by examining up close the only one we can. (Obviously, we will need one daylight observing session – but there will be several opportunities for this.)

6. Observe one or more members of each of the major classes of astronomical objects – meteors, asteroids, comets, planets, moons, stars, double stars, variable stars, open star clusters, globular star clusters, planetary nebulae, emission nebulae, and galaxies. (Yes, this is a biggie!)

Holistic learning goal

In astronomy there is always both the reality that we see and the reality that we know and what we know frequently is at odds with what we see. But the trick is to master both what we see and what we know so that when you observe something you have a deep, intuitive sense of what it is you are observing. Let me give a simple example.

The reality that we see is that the Sun rises.

The reality that we know is that the Earth is turning constantly eastward. We're not on a stable platform. We're on a merry-go-round!

The words “sunrise” and “sunset” are entrenched in our language and our sense of reality. But we have known for four centuries now that the Earth is spinning on its axis. When we see the Sun "rise” or “set,” however, we speak of it as if it is doing the moving, not us.

Try this: When you see the Sun appear to rise or set, think instead about the Earth turning.

Picture yourself rushing eastward at about 800 miles an hour with our star now coming into view, or quickly being left behind as we continue our journey into night. Better yet, look at a tree or building that is blocking your view of something in the sky such as a star, the moon, or a planet. If you wait long enough, that tree or building will move. Honest. That’s reality.

Small thing, I know. Of course you know the Earth is spinning. Every school child learns it. But is it really part of your thought pattern? Do you have an intuitive sense of it? After all, the idea of the Earth spinning simply goes against both common sense and common experience. Because of this mindset, people new to astronomy frequently express surprise that the stars march steadily across the dome of the sky, or when they look in a telescope the object they are viewing drifts out of view in a minute or two.

But as a basic principle, this is important because just about everything we look at in the sky will put incredible demands on our ability to really grasp what we are seeing. It is relatively easy to learn the symbol manipulation part of it. That is, to be able to recite the correct words and the correct numbers. It is far more difficult to make intuitive sense of this stuff, at least in part because little or nothing in our evolution has prepared us for it. We’re prepared to deal with – to live with – what we encounter on Earth. Our genes evolved based on the various demands this planet puts on us.

So how do we approach the tasks of really understanding what we are seeing in the sky?

By learning. By observing. By experiencing. And by constantly reminding ourselves what the relatively sparse visual signals are telling us. My approach is to move from the knowable, to the observable, to what we understand is the reality – and to do so in manageable steps. That’s why we will study our Moon, for example. It’s near and small and manageable and studying it helps us begin to take much more difficult steps like understanding our Sun.

Nothing in our every day experience prepares us to visualize a gas ball 16 times as dense as lead and large enough to hold more than one million Earths. Both numbers and physical properties defy our practical experience.

I hope this is making some sense to you. The bottom line is this:

Our basic goal is for everyone to be able to find his or her way around the night sky and to find anything and everything within range of our eyes and telescopes.

But I also hope we build the foundations for a lifelong journey to a deep understanding and appreciation of what it is we are seeing.