Why are people not so interested in Astronomy?

[Yellow_Kazooie]

Check out this article I wrote on Medium and tell me what you think!

https://medium.com/astronomy-cosmology-space-exploration/cd70cb8cb68f

[acropolite]

I don't think I agree, at least in our country, interest in space and Astronomy is probably higher than it's ever been.

There are numerous Television shows on Space and Astronomy, frequent Newspaper coverage and just the other day I noticed our local radio network hosting a lengthy discussion on the makeup of the Universe.

The membership of this forum and the associated equipment spread amongst members shows that those interested are spending more and delving deeper in to the tehnical aspects of their hobby.

Finally take a look at any photography forum, (and to soem extent Social Media) you'll find some very good examples of night landscape photography and timelapses, often taked by people who don't consider themselves astronomers.

[multiweb]

I think the simplest answer would be light pollution. Ancient civilisations had a close affinity to the stars and were curious about what they saw. Our skies have mostly gone in populated areas nowadays.

[Manav]

Nice article! I would agree with Marc LP is a big contributor. If you can't see whats up there how will you get interested.

[Yellow_Kazooie]

God, how could I forget light pollution? I knew something was missing. Thank you

Thanks.
Sorry, but who are you talking about? who is marc lp?

[Shano592]

LP= Light Pollution .... :rofl:

[pdalek]

I asked my daughter - she said nobody can see any stars due to light pollution. This was also my first thought.

I was born the year sputnik launched and so grew up feeling the link between space travel and astronomy. This link died for most people at the end of Apollo. Modern space travel is too expensive for private flights and stuck doing the same old stuff with NASA. This may change in about a decade.

I used to sail and needed to know celestial navigation. Now there is GPS. Even professional ships masters don't need to study celestial navigation.

I think the public likes the pretty pictures the observatories now publish, but most are not interested in understanding the research. Expensive pictures don't help pay the mortgage.

Astronomy education was never good. Now legal liability limits any observing.

[pdalek]

Just read this article on space research
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-space-people.html
It shows the post-Apollo decline.

[rally]

Patrick,

On the contrary - It actually states an increase !

"The Apollo missions inspired a generation.
The number of US graduates in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM subjects), from high-school through to PhD, has doubled. The relative growth rate since then has dropped drastically, even though the total number has gone up."

So when there was a very small number, the increase as a percentage was great, as the numbers climbed the rate of growth has declined even though numbers have increased.

But I think there is a greater level of awareness on so many new and fronts.
As I recall Astronomy gets a greater number of citations than any other discipline


As for the OPs initial argument and the link provided.

Maybe that cited growth rebuffs the argument or the fact that in the 60s we had two Nations involved in Space flight (UK and USSR) we now have many wealthy developed countries involved in Unmanned Space flight - USA, UK, China, India, Japan, European Space Agency, Italy . . .
Plus lots of countries making and launching satellites
People of 38 Nationalities have been into Space

Whilst the expenditure of NASA Space missions has dropped, there is more expenditure on building terrestrial based space research by the US and other nations as sole or joint projects and in the last few years private enterprise well and truly participating in commercial space flight.

We dont send people into space because we have robotics to do what people cannot do for much less and much longer !

The first of anything - first space ship, first astronaut into space, first lunar landing, first walk on the moon - these are always the sort of events that will capture the publics imagination and get the press.

So is the argument that there hasnt been as many groundbreaking, head turning events that have captured the public's imagination ?

It just seems to me to be an extremely simplistic argument based on an unsubstantiated premise by the author without facts, real research or details and missing about 99% of the content that should be there and relies on unsubstantiated opinions on a few barely relevant points.

Its barely even an opinion and whilst a good talking point - needs further development to be treated seriously

Sorry for the hard line.

Where's Gary when we need him !!

[Poita]

Some barriers are:
Light Pollution.
Hubble images setting high expectations (that are dashed when looking through a scope).
Public not understanding any relevance for Astronomy to them.
Daylight savings (Hard to get my kids to stay up late enough in Summer, then too cold in Winter).
Access to equipment. (Though equipment is cheaper than it has ever been it is still pricey).
Difficulty. (People are used to getting their info/imagery/entertainment quickly and easily now).

That said though, whenever I have taken a solar scope into an infants/primary school, every kid in the playground has lined up to take a look, and questions flow. Interest is there, it is just sometimes hidden due to not having an outlet.

[BPO]

^ This.

[mental4astro]

More fundamental to the public not understanding astronomy's relevance to them is ignorance in its many other forms. The relevance part stems out from a lot of the underlying reasons.

While Apollo, Hubble, Voyager, etc, have done a lot to show us what is out there, a lot of people equate this with "rocket science" and how being brainy is a prerequisite to get into astro. What doesn't help is a mass media that screws up explanations of what scientific bodies put in media releases.

Worse still is a more sinister aspect that underlies the "uncool" aspect - that being dumb is cool. While we that are involved in astro revel in new discoveries and rejoice at someone's first astro photo, in too many schools the love of knowledge is lost for the sake of appearing cool amongst peers. While there are many, many schools where this is not the case and learning thrives, we can't ever forget those schools where this IS the case, learning is frowned upon, and these young people then share their ignorance for evermore. This makes me sad. This is not new. I'm sure you all would remember classmates that insisted in not working at school. But it seems to be worse today.

[mental4astro]

My last post is rather doom-and-gloom. But I should also note that one of my favourite astro related past times is attending star parties at schools! Not only do I get to share my passion for astro, but I also work hard at showing what modest gear can do, AND at insisting that I make my explanations simple to understand without talking down, talking at or dumbing down. Yes light pollution is a pain in the bum, BUT a video camera can do live what our eyes can't. If I'm the only person doing a presentation at a school, I always take two scopes - one for visual and another set up with a video camera. People's curiosity is satisfied in looking through a scope, but I can also show them something now lost to light pollution. While not as spectacular as the highly processed images we see here in IIS, the image is live and of good enough quality to impress all the same. This I really enjoy.

[Wavytone]

Alex, nihilism (which is what that is) has always been around in a certain socio-economic segment of the australian population. I'd have to say there were three things that stand out, which are very missing today:

1. NASA was given a very simple clear mission - to land a man on the moon, a dream that even drunken yobs at a pub could understand pretty well. Mars and the planets... didn't quite get so much interest, frankly.

2. Carl Sagan's TV series, 'Cosmos', managed to capture the public imagination fairly well, especially school-age kids learning science for the first time. Couple that with the Mariner and Voyager missions and yes quite a few were sufficiently interested to at least take a look at astronomy.

3. Upto the mid 1980's, keen amateurs with the right gear could make minor contributions to astronomy. That is pretty much finished now, thanks to the technological advances on several fronts.

In current times all three of these are lacking.

- NASA is doing nothing much of significance and its budget has been slashed, and there are no really outstanding missions going on that will grab the public.

- since Carl Sagan there hasn't been a really decent astronomy series that compares. The BBC efforts are all very well but frankly rather lame and too dumbed-down.

- there isn't much you can do now as an amateur beyond "ooh look at that" and take a few happy-snaps much the snap as millions of others.

Lastly... there has been a general trend away from the hard sciences in secondary and territory institutions for the past 20 years as these are perceived as "too hard" compared to the soft subjects, and admittedly have rather poor career prospects. The output from one graduate school alone in Australia is enough to supply all the positions requiring PhDs; the rest finish up driving taxis or waiting on tables while making major career change.

It leaves astronomy where it was a hundred years ago - an interesting little niche subject which kids should learn about if they have a chance, to see for themselves that these things are real, that mathematics has real applications and that there is such a thing as "hard proof" (i.e. right or wrong) by actually observing something, not just stuff in a book or computer game.

[AstroJunk]

Got to pull you up on that one - Australian amateur astronomers are world leaders in research and discovery. We are somewhat drowned out in the noise of a millon astrophotographers taking the same photos of the same objects, but we're very much alive :)

[JB80]

Maybe, maybe not. It's a fact that after each airing in the UK of Stargazing Live the interest of newcomers has spiked tremendously.
After the first airing retailers were unprepared for the coming assault on their stock levels and many were sold out for months on entry level equipment. Astro societies saw a boom in interest as well.

Even after the latest airing a month or so ago the largest UK forum was breaking records for number of people online at one time.

The BBC throw out plenty of well made science/astro related shows via Horizon(people still moan about them too but it's the best we've got) but they don't capture the publics attention in the same way as the Stargazing shows or even the Sky at Night does. The new Cosmos may be good but it's not accessible and will go largely missed by the general public until it's aired on a main network. I know I'm going to miss out on it so yeah, hype away.
Sure it may seem like the BBC shows are dumbed down to those already in the pastime or with an interest but for newcomers it is clearly a starting point that should only ever be encouraged and applauded.

Personally I think it's a fine example of what sort of impact can be made if given the right type of exposure.

[madbadgalaxyman]

Simple reason why a large proportion of the population aren't interested in astronomy.....

50 percent of the human population are in the bottom half of the distribution of numerical values of individual human intelligence, and these people, through no fault of their own, are genetically unable to understand information of moderate complexity.

It has become a popular and standard belief that people are "equal", but this is actually a moral position held by the opinion makers in our society;
the only problem with this position is that it is not in accord with the facts.

[Varangian]

20,000 years ago it was all about fire and stars

50 years ago it was all about television

Yesterday it was all about the internet

Kids have way too many options these days and if they want to know what's up there they'll just Google it rather than look up their local astronomy club.

[pw]

And yet I've found the internet a brilliant adjunct to hobbies, you can participate in communities like this where the interest is shared, you can learn from the mistakes of others, you can research purchases and deals and so on. For me the internet has been an enabler in my participation in hobbies.

[Varangian]

Yep true although you need to have a predisposition to search out an astronomy forum don't you? Kids have to get past epic fail videos etc. and the rest of the peer pressure rubbish first.

[pw]

You are right John, the interest has to be there, but the internet can fan a smouldering ember of interest into a decent sized fire. :-)

[Varangian]

Running school programs are the best way. I ran a very amateur one at my kid's primary school. I had my 12" Dob there with a loan 8" Dob and a heap of GSO plossl eyepieces. We met at 7pm in suburban Melbourne on the school oval. We looked at Jupiter and the moon and the kids had a ball!

My son actually did a show and tell day today at school and took in a massive poster of giants, planets and black holes and went on an on all about them. He got so many questions he ran out of time.

Start at early school level and make it fun - better yet make a very simple astronomy program part of the school curriculum like they did in my son's prep class. Just like anything kids need to know what's out there to in order to start asking questions.

[pdalek]

School programs using help from amateur astronomers are good, but are greatly limited by available resources. There are about 10,000 schools with 5.5 million students.

Helping out must be done with care. In Victoria, if you have not had a Working With Children Check and the activity does not have the required level of teacher supervision, you may face criminal charges. The only safe way is for the activity to be conducted by a club which has appropriate insurance.

[Varangian]

We are not talking about all schools and students here, just as many as possible. When I say curriculum I mean in class not actually viewing nights either, on most occasions that's simply impractical. And yes great points re. insurances and police checks. I'm on the executive committee and have completed my police check as part of that and the school looked after insurance but great call, these are requirements that anyone (clubs) should be aware of prior to approaching or being approach by schools.

[mr bruess]

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey should get more people
(http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEkQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2 Fwiki%2FCosmos%3A_A_Spacetime_Odyss ey&ei=kUocU9ynN4bgkgWQ2YHgCQ&usg=AFQjCNGwjdnHOjCpbMMf7d2O_yo_bbu LjQ&sig2=YRJM-pD4J60dOyxhQtOuVQ&bvm=bv.62578216,d.dGI)

interested in Astronomy.It will stimulate more interest.And get a few more telescope sale too.

Pity that there is no "sky at night" type program in Australia.

[rcheshire]

What does society (in a rather general sense) say is important? Isn't that what people tend to listen to.

I had the pleasure of introducing a friend and his 6 year old daughter to the visual observers at a recent astro camp. Independent of any specific motivation that my friend knows of her interest in astronomy has bloomed quite naturally. The visit to the camp was merely a fact finding mission for her father and a first look through a 'real' telescope for her. This little lady has sparked all their interest. Looks like dad's up for an 8" Dob. As he said, it will be great for the family, they live in a semi rural area, with the local astronomy club around the corner.

According to my friend her interest grew steadily and avidly. But she is only 6 and there are many more distractions along the way. I would be interested to see where this child's interests lie in 15 years, as a result of supportive thinking parents. They too were impressed by the gear they saw and handled. More than they expected. Their perception was of a bunch of Tasco's on fibrous tripods.

[Blue Skies]

Oh my, Wavytone, you need to look around a bit more! Jonathan is quite right. This morning I was at the post office, sending a memory stick with approx 3 minutes of astro-video on it to professional astronomers in Rio de Janiro. Why do they want it? Turns out there is a possibility that if I didn't actually record the solid evidence of TNO 90482 Orcus itself during an occultation event on 1st March that I may have seen a graze of it's (possible) atmosphere. It's going to take some fancy data-cruching to find out, but I'm tinkled pink to be asked to do this even if it turns out to be negative result, and its part of why I got involved with occultation observations using video - being on the leading of discovery and increasing knowledge about our solar system. Just little ol' me in my backyard with about $4K worth of basic astro gear. How is that not making a contribution?

[Tony_]

Overall it's probably like any interest - you are either interested or you aren't. People who love golf, for example, probably don't understand why everyone doesn't love it.
Also with astronomy the average person just doesn't appreciate the scale of the universe - the distances, number of galaxies, number of stars etc., the mass of objects or a neutron star spinning at 700 revolutions per second. etc etc.
Astronomy images are like art - you either get it or you don't, same with visual astronomy. Also, I have to admit, as far as visual astronomy - a lot of the faint fuzzies just don't have any wow factor. Most people want to see the moon and planets and apart from a few clusters they don't appreciate what they are seeing. In fact a lot of people can't even see the fainter fuzzies due to lack of experience. Most people expect that the view through a telescope will be like the pictures.

[PeterM]

Congratulations Jacquie, that is so cool to read.
Yes you have made a contribution to the science and I know the dedication involved in just getting the data.
To Astrojunk too, whom I also know puts in many, many hours of blood sweat and tears that have resulted in pro-am collaboration.
To suggest that australian amateurs to the 80s made minor contributions AND dismiss the last 34 years is nonsense and clearly wrong. This in itself does not help our hobby one bit.

[AstroJunk]

Nice one J!

And in about 24 hrs, 16 scopes are hoping to make the first ever accurate profile of this outer main belt rock, and with any luck refine the orbit of its satellite asteroid that has only ever been detected by the HST.

Certainly one of the biggest scientific payloads from the occultation community in a while if the weather and predictions hold good...

(and hardly any need to mention the 88 supernovae discovered by Peters team;))

[Blue Skies]

That's one of the other things I like about occultation work - it's a team effort, even if you're working alone, and an international team effort as well. There was something like 26 observers in four countries working together for the Orcus event, with the Japanese observers scoring a hit for Vanth, the moon of Orcus.

And the BOSS team have been an inspiration for me too. :)

May there always be someone who looks up at the night sky and wonders what else they could be doing with their telescope than looking at the Orion Nebula... :D

[raymo]

Being long retired, I am at the other end of the spectrum from the young
school children that you mention, but I try to do my bit by keeping the
over 55's grey matter active. I used to teach a short course of basic Astronomy in the form of adult evening classes. When the local organisers
of the organisation known as U3A[University Of The Third Age] discovered this, they asked me if I would give a series of talks and a couple of observing sessions. I was surprised to get 12 attendees from a town this small, and more surprised that 11 were women. I realised that you cannot keep Astronomy relatively simple for 6 hrs of talks, so I made up
a presentation called Marvels and mysteries of the Universe, which
included lots of stuff from other disciplines, and it was very well received.
The local Historical Society asked me to give a 45 min talk, which went
down well. All well and good, but I couldn't elicit any interest from the
science department of the local high school, and have, sadly, had no
luck trying to get a small Astro club up and running.[Our nearest club
is over an hour's drive away.
raymo

[MichaelSW]

One evening, the view of Saturn from my back yard was particularly clear and crisp. I went across the road to a recently arrived neighbour, introduced myself and asked would be like to come and have a look with his family at Saturn, its rings and its moons?

His reply was short and sweet, "No, I'm not interested". Just like that. Close the door. Finished.

I was stunned to consider how anyone could possibly not be interested. After all, hadn't it been a view of Saturn some 47 years previous through my Uncle's home made 8" Newtonian that lit the Astronomy flame inside me?

Eventually I realised - no matter how many Formula 1 or Motor GP's they show on television, I never watch.

[AG Hybrid]

I don't offer anyone anything anymore. It doesn't matter who, I tell them nothing and I offer them nothing. Even if they have little kids who are probably interested in taking a peek, I keep my mouth shut. I have become so disheartened by the indifference to Astronomy by the average person that I enjoy the views just for myself now and I keep them to myself unless I am observing with other astronomers, for which (who know me) I am always happy to share, and to take a look through their telescopes regardless of size, design or make.

On numerous occasions I have offered my neighbors or even a stranger passing by, (if I am out the front of my house) a view through my scope at Luna or Jupiter or Saturn. Easy stuff I know the average person gets excited for if they will only look.But, they don't want to look. Every single time I get a "No, thank you", or a " Not really interested in that kind of stuff" or "Yeah sure!" and then they never turn up.

All I am offering is a look. I'm not trying to sell them funeral insurance or a Shamwow. (Shamwow's are awesome though).

I know some will say thats not the right attitude or not to lose heart,keep trying etc. But, you get to the point where its embarrassing for yourself and them. So I have just thrown my hands in the air and said **** it. If they are interested or curious. They will come. But, I am certain they never will.

[rally]

Patrick,

Are you trying to discourage everyone from running a community event ?
Threatening the possibility of a criminal offence for running a school event !

Its a straight forward matter to get the school to do the Police check - at least in my state. Hardly a reason to put forward and any headmaster worth their socks will jump at the opportunity to have such an event and facilitate it as much as they can.

I ran a number of local Primary School Astronomy events a few years ago and they all resulted in a majority of the school students and their families attending and were a huge success.
The ages ranged from reception ages students of 5yrs to 12/13 year olds.

Sure, I cant deal with 5.5 million students and that isnt my repsosnibility, but the fact that 5.49999 million missed out on my events shouldnt discourage us from doing it.

I have every reason to believe that they encouraged a generation and provided them with some basic understanding of astronomy.

But best of all they all had great fun !

We had a fancy dress star party for one event, and that was just a fantastic exercise
The initial star party was followed up with a Planetarium visit - all students from the school attended in a number of sessions.
We had telescope building classes for those students who were most interested and the students got to keep their telescope (one per family).

The school introduced some classroom astronomy from out of one of the curriculum books and downloaded the rest from the net - which ranged from general knowledge to simple colour in the planets for the littlies.
Solar system mobiles and models were made - they produced some really exciting stuff and the school was abuzz with astronomy for 6 months.

The library featured astronomy books, we had posters up and one parent even managed to organise an event with Andy Thomas where the students from our school and 5 other schools got to meet him.

We had posters, computer planetarium animations (using Stellarium) playing on classroom PCs

The Parents and Friends Association put on a BBQ, sweets and drinks and made some money at the same time - so it became a real community event.

The cost of all of this - almost nothing but some volunteers (my buddies whose charitable efforts I was most grateful for) and a bit of elbow grease from everyone.

I think everyone should be encouraged to try their hand at running some events like this - they are busy on the nights where you are setting up, but easily managed and they are extremely rewarding.
By the end of the evening you usually get the most interested students and parent staying back and you can start slewing the scopes around to some more esoteric stuff and have a good chat.

The reports I got back from some parents were extremely gratifying, so i know just from those few that it was worth every bit of it.
Anyone who would like any info on what was done, how to plan it, what to do and not to do etc etc can PM me I am only happy to help.

From my experience it was all upside !

Cheers

Rally

[doppler]

If you let the school do all the organising and supervising you do not need any official clearance to do an astronomy demonstration. Our local astronomy group gets asked by 3 or 4 schools each year if we could put on a school astro veiwing night. We just manage to get enough volunteers each time but if we had to apply for "blue cards" for one or two nights a year I think that no one would volunteer. We are not an official club and as such have no insurance, but what would we need to be insured against?

My most nervous moment was when my sons year 7 teacher asked me to show the year 7's the first transit of venus through the telescope. It all went well but I made sure that she stressed the importance of saftey instructions when veiwing the sun to the students. Its sad but most school students missed out on the much publised second transit through lack of education by those in charge and their fear of legal liability.

Rick

[madbadgalaxyman]

For many individual humans, passionate belief, in the absence of evidence, is much much easier than actually trying to know what is really happening on the Earth and in the Universe.
There are no simple answers, and many people find it much too hard to:
- acquire large amounts of information
- learn intricately structured knowledge,
- try to make logical sense of a complicated universe.

It is easier to worship the wonderfulness of Justin Bieber (sorry, Bieber fans, but I am making a point about passionate belief in the absence of evidence), or to fervently promulgate the idea that aliens are constantly visiting the Earth, or to believe with 100 percent certainty that a rock crystal has strong and real healing powers, than to actually find out what is really happening in our universe.

"People would rather believe than know"
- E. O. Wilson

The idea of a logically structured cosmos has been around for a long time (since at least the planetary position observations of the priests and astrologers in ancient Mesopotamia), but until the rise of quantitative science based on actual observations of the actual universe, even the most learned people in the world were quite able to believe in almost anything. For instance, in the mid 14th century, with the enormous mortality from the bubonic plague, there was a search for logical explanations of this epidemic by the most learned people in Europe. The Pope accordingly set up a commission of enquiry into the causes of the Black Death, and the enquiry concluded, after summing up all available evidence and knowledge, that the bubonic plague was caused by a certain alignment of the planets! This was the best that 14th century learning could manage, on the question of the causality of a physical phenomenon.

It is actually hard to learn and hard to know, as it requires some effort on the part of the person who is questing for knowledge. Also, a lack of pre-existing basic knowledge hampers a large percentage of the population from ever being able to learn anything of any significance.

[Rob_K]

Justin Bieber is like, soooo 2013.... ;)

Cheers -