Sky & Telescope May 2002 [antikvár]

Show Your Support s hobbyists, we do astronomy for fun. We enjoy viewing distant celestial objects in our telescopes, bathing our eyeballs in starlight emitted hundreds, ihousands, even millions of years ago. We get a thrill from capturing images of planets, nebulae, and galaxies. We proudly show these to our friends and families, who admire them and praise our skill — even as they wonder what's so "fun" about freezing outside in winter, or swatting mosquitoes in summer, when we should be sleeping. We do all this because we love astronomy. Of course, astronomy is not just a hobby. It's a science, too — surely the oldest, and arguably the most all-encompassing (there's astrobiology, astrochemistry, astrophysics, and astro-just-about-everything-else). Do we love the science of astronomy as much as we love giving the neighborhood kids their first look at Saturn in the eyepiece? I think most of us do. Surveys show that Sky Telescope's readers are just as interested in news of the latest astronomical discoveries as in news of upcoming skywatching treats. This is good, because staying on top of what's happening in cosmic research can be an essential survival skill at any gathering, when people find out you're an astronomer and suddenly inundate you with questions about the latest discoveries to make the headlines. Being able to expound on these topics with some authority can provide a nice ego boost. Not being able to do so can lead to awkward silence or embarrassing shoulder shrugs. But what if there were no astronomical discoveries? What if all the world s observatories were mothballed and all the telescopes in orbit were switched off? We'd never get the answers to some of the most intriguing questions humans have been asking since the dawn of intelligence. Where did we come from? Is there life beyond Earth? What is the fate of the universe? Fortunately no one's talking about shutting down the engines of astronomical discovery. But even in the best of times, only the tiniest fraction of most nations' finances go to astronomy. In tough economic times, such as those we're in now, science is one of the first targets of the budget ax. Witness the Bush administration's proposed budget for 2003, which would kill NASA's outer-planet missions and cut back astronomy at the National Science Foundation. Sadly, most lawmakers don't understand or appreciate science, except perhaps the kind that leads to new weapons or other practical "benefits." So it's up to us: We, the voters, need to tell our representatives that we want to see astronomy funded at a reasonable level — not in lieu of something else, but because we believe our lives will be enriched enormously by seeking, and maybe even finding, the answers to the cosmic questions that have bedeviled us for millennia.