Oakland Unified teachers assembling Galileoscopes at Chabot

Through a generous donation by a concerned citizen (concerned that kids today aren't seeing enough of the sky), Chabot just completed a pair of workshops for Oakland teachers that places in their capable hands and in their classrooms "Galileoscopes"—special telescopes designed and manufactured for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. The Galileoscope is a low cost, simple, but good-quality telescope designed to simulate the power and field of view of Galileo's original telescope, which opened up the universe in such a profound way.

In September and October, a total of 23 Oakland teachers received training, activities, and one Galileoscope each (plus tripod), enabling them to share the experience with their students and, hopefully, spark their imagination and curiosity about the world around us in a way that nothing but astronomy does.

A look through a telescope—any telescope, big or small—does put a spark in the eye and the imagination. At least, that was my experience. Growing up in Oakland back in the 60's, I didn't have access to any small telescopes, but Chabot Observatory was only a couple miles away, and my family often went up on a weekend night for a classroom demo, a planetarium show, and thoroughly enjoyable viewing through the two antique telescopes, Leah and Rachel. Something about the actual light from Saturn or Jupiter or a distant galaxy tickling the receptors in your retina places you out there—or puts those objects directly into your brain.

The Oakland teachers now armed with their Galileoscopes will use these simple but effective tools to show their students the difference between seeing Saturn as a spot of light and Saturn as a disk with "ears" (the appearance of its rings through a Galileoscope), or the difference between Jupiter as a brighter spot of light and Jupiter as a world with a giant storm in its clouds and four smaller "worlds" (moons) in orbit around it, or the difference between the Moon as a disk with light and dark areas that make interesting shapes in our imaginations and the Moon with mountain ranges, vast plains, thousands upon thousands of craters, and shadows stretching across the landscape.

By the way, Galileoscopes can still be ordered, through the Galileoscope website, for a short time still, in case you're interested in getting your toe into the door of a much bigger universe….

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Depiction of Galileo demonstrating his astronomical telescope.

(Almost as famous as this act of opening our eyes to wonders we'd never witnessed, Galileo was tried by the Inquisition for pointing out that there were more things in heaven than were imagined by Church doctrine–but that's another story altogether…)

It's an intriguing fact that, beyond the Sun merely being a bright disk, the Moon a not-so-bright and slightly mottled disk, the stars pinpoints of light and the planets pinpoints of light that move, everything we have learned about the universe and the objects in it we have learned in the last four centuries, since the invention of the telescope and Galileo's putting it to it's most famous use: astronomy.

Galileo saw on the Moon craters, mountains, and valleys, and likened the "uneven, rough… depressions and bulges" to Earth's geographical features. Venus was revealed to undergo lunar-like phases, which provided controversial insight into the layout of the Solar System. Jupiter had four small "star-like" moons that moved around it–which defied Church doctrine holding that everything in the universe goes around the Earth. And Saturn possessed jug-handle-like protrusions, whatever those were!

It may be difficult to imagine what Galileo was feeling when he made these discoveries of things we take for granted. How exciting to peer through that celestial peephole and discover that the Moon is another world, and that there are worlds out there that had never been seen or imagined before. Sure, new discoveries about Mars keep rolling in, and we're finding a new extrasolar planet about every month–but the excitement about these discoveries is tempered by the fact that we already suspected things like these as possibilities. For Galileo, the magnified astronomical sky was practically a blank canvass.

Back to IYA 2009–what's going on? Who's promoting this, and what is being done to celebrate?

NASA is promoting it, and many different organizations (including Chabot and the Eastbay Astronomical Society) are participating in a number of ways: star parties, special programs, special events, and good old fashioned put-your-eye-to-this-telescope-and-gawk public observing activities.
Honestly, there's nothing like looking through a telescope–and it doesn't have to be a large one. I don't doubt that I first became inspired into astronomy when, as a child, my family would take me to Chabot Observatory to look through the telescopes.

When the new Chabot Space & Science Center reopened the telescopes after the move to our present site, I found all of the childhood wonder flooded back when I put my eye to the eyepiece to regard Saturn. There's an excitement that simply can't be achieved by looking at photographs. You just have to experience it for yourself, as Galileo did four centuries ago…

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