Astronomy Across the Curriculum

I see astronomy as a good cross-curricula subject because discoveries in astronomy challenge our core perceptions of ourselves and our role in the universe. What’s more, they frequently involve conclusions that go so far beyond our common sense perception of reality that in reporting them we need more than words and more than photographs. When we confront the ineffable, we need our ability to paint pictures, to write music and poetry, and yes, to evolve a modern mythology where metaphor and story express what we can’t report in any other way.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is peculiar to astronomy, but I do think it is frequently confronted there when the human heart and eyes meet the awesome beauty, power, and distance of the stars. Albert Einstein could express himself wonderfully in the language of math and was right on target with these words:

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."

We should, of course, be bringing this sense of awe into all dimensions of our lives and all subjects – integrating it in proper proportions where it makes sense to do so. Nothing stands in isolation, but there is a natural tendency in our need to create a practical curriculum that puts emphasis on the parts, rather than the whole. To combat that tendency, here are a few modest jumping off points where you may consider integrating astronomy into other subject areas.

English – In “The Star-splitter” Robert Frost focuses on the observation of double stars, an enjoyable activity for amateur astronomers and a most meaningful observation for professionals, providing details about the mass of two stars by the way they interact with one another. Frost integrates the visual magic of “splitting doubles” with the tale of a man, sick of hard-scrabble farming, who burns down his barn so he can use the insurance money to buy a telescope. And as the narrator and the barn burner separate the stars, they say “some of the best things we ever said.” Frost dabbled in amateur astronomy, but here he pursues head-on the question of astronomy – a most impractical pursuit – taking precedence over the very practical needs of farming. In exploring these ideas wouldn’t it be wonderful if your students could see a double star themselves – and could split it?

History – Here the possibilities are endless, but for the broad sweep it would be interesting to explore how our changing view of the cosmos interacted with our changing view of ourselves. The major hinge to examine here is the Copernican Revolution. This is not an instant event. It took 100 years and the combined efforts of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton to bring about this revolution. (Why?) But to me the central thread here is not simply an overturning of accepted science by new discoveries and theories, but the ways in which this new perspective that removed the Earth from its central place in the cosmos, rippled through our religious, political, and cultural beliefs.

Political Science – Is there a connection between our view of the cosmos and the rise of democracy? Perhaps. But if you wish to narrow the focus, a great debate can certainly be built around the space race between Russia and the United States, the practicality – or impracticality – of men going to the Moon or Mars, and the political ramifications of the current NASA budget. How does a public, largely unschooled in the science of space, come to grips with issues involving the best way to spend huge sums of money for scientific research?

Math - How fast are we moving eastward, due to the Earth’s rotation, if we stand on the equator? The north pole? Or as we sit in our classroom in Dartmouth? Or knowing that the Earth goes around the Sun every 365 days (roughly), and that its motion changes our view of the stars, can we calculate how much change occurs in a week? A month? In practical terms, if we see a certain star on the horizon at 9 pm on January 1, how much higher in the sky will that star appear to be at 9 pm on February 1? And why do we measure our view of the sky in degrees, minutes, and seconds? The top speed of any man made object so far is about 35,000 miles an hour. At that speed how long would it take us to get to the Sun? The next nearest star?

Art – Vincent van Gogh said: "For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." He did at least three paintings of the stars at night – see
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html - that raise a multitude of questions. To what extent are these paintings an accurate depiction of the night sky? In what sense do we mean the word “accurate?” How do these paintings convey more than a normal star chart, or a photograph?

Globalness – Not a formal subject yet? Maybe not. But consider that many of us look on the same stars no matter where in the world we are. The constellations have no country. Even before their boundaries were established by international agreement, vastly different cultures developed remarkably similar mythology about the same patterns of stars. Explore the myths behind the Pleiades, for example, as expressed by ancient cultures in the Middle East, the American Indians, and the Japanese. And explore this contemporary Web site, initiated by an Iranian photographer, anxious to show that in the stars we all share common ground. http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/

Sciences - Of course there are many connections here. Astronomy is usually tied directly to physics, but there are many astronomical problems that require a command of basic chemistry, and the search for life on other worlds demands a definition of – and biological understanding of – life on Earth. Why, for example, was it important that researchers, using the Spitzer Space Telescope, recently discovered large amounts of simple organic gases and water vapor in a possible planet-forming region around an infant star?