LouisS's blog

Recently, I was asked to participate in a wonderful event funded by NASA. It’s called Music and Astronomy Under the Stars. Dr. Donald Lubowich, Coordinator of the Astronomy Outreach Program at Hofstra University, received this funding to give concertgoers a view of the cosmos at the Tanglewood Music Festival. This event was co-sponsored by The Dudley Observatory, of which I am a member. Also participating were members from the Springfield Stars Club.

Tanglewood is a beautiful place nestled in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts and it provided a wonderful setting for this astronomy education and outreach program. Once our telescopes were set up on the spacious lawn provided to our group, curious musicians, staff and concert attendees began to approach us and ask questions about our various telescopes, celestial objects and recent news they’ve read.

Are you disappointed about not being one of the select few chosen to attend the SDO Tweetups and will miss all the fun and excitement? Have no fear, Astronomy.FM is here!

Astronomy.FM wishes to invite all Space Tweeps to attend its Virtual SDO Launch Tweetup! The goal is to offer a venue for anyone who wants to participate, but is unable to get to one of the many Regional SDO Launch Tweetup locations. NASA has indicated that, to their knowledge, Astronomy.FM is the "first" to hold a virtual Tweetup; and they have forwarded material to enable an exceptional online experience. Although virtual, our Tweetup will be much like traditional ones and will include:

In his Address to the U.S. Congress in 1975, Arthur C. Clarke said: "I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books." In his book, "First on the Moon" Clarke writes: "The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space." Let's celebrate Arthur C. Clarke's birth by contemplating his words.

Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, NY on November 9, 1934, and Saturday, November 7th has been declared Carl Sagan Day. There are many scheduled events to celebrate this enthusiastic astronomer's birth and lifetime dedication to the awareness of our universe.

Rather than hear about Carl Sagan from me, I thought I'd post my favorite quote of his and let him speak for himself.

"For thousands of years, humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings were pulled by a god or gods, unseen or inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia; on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the the islands and inlets of the Aegean Sea. Suddenly, there were human beings who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from similar forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun, and that the stars were very far away. This revolution made Cosmos out of Chaos."