NASA Survey of Astronomers

[Terry B]

An email I received

Dear Fellow,

We’ve been contacted by Dr. Jennifer Inman, a physicist for NASA Langley Research Centre. She has asked if you would be interested in helping to enlighten NASA researchers about your telescope usage and astronomical viewing habits by taking a short survey.

Dr Inman is conducting a probabilistic risk assessment of the hazard potentially presented to the general public as a result of NASA’s satellite-based climate science lidar measurements.

They’ve been working with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the NASA Night Sky Network to formulate initial estimates of many of the input parameters used in their calculations (e.g. number of amateur astronomers, distribution of telescopes by entrance aperture, frequency of telescopic observations, etc.). They’ve begun a higher-fidelity Monte Carlo analysis and want to try to refine some of their estimates.

To that end, they’ve put together a survey targeted at astronomers. You can complete the survey here: https://goo.gl/forms/E7n4Xrvp3oQqmCYn1 (https://goo.gl/forms/E7n4Xrvp3oQqmCYn1).


***Please note that this is a request from NASA. I will not be able to answer any questions about the project or the survey.***


Best wishes,

Annie Hogan
Memberships Officer
Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly W1J 0BQ, UK

[gary]

Thanks for forwarding Terry.

This is certainly a very important notice.

As the additional information section of the survey states :-

[deanm]

Bloody hell!
They are seriously concerned about blinding folk like us.
There must be some lawyers haunting these IIS pages: what liability might be involved? Who would pay compensation/damages?
How would fault be established ("I was looking through may 'scope last night & suddenly, my eyeball exploded.."!)
Dean

[sil]

Thanks Terry!

Hope the amateur input is taken seriously and not just a pr stunt to make it look like due diligence. I choose to believe the former.

[Wavytone]

:eyepop: I'm waiting for the headline on the Daily Telegraph "NASA's orbiting lasers blinding pilots at night..." I wonder how the legal laser nazis will react.

More to the point an orbiting LIDAR might be the cause of occasional flashes reported that don't correlate to an iridium satellite or similar.

[Suzy]

Oh charming... It's getting harder to look through a telescope :mad2:, not only do we have to contend with light pollution on the ground but now dodge being blinded from space. Scary.
And it really worries me that we're only finding out about this now :question:.

Thank you Terry and to Garry for all the info. I'm with Dean, my head spins at the legalities regarding injury :shrug:.


Fiddlesticks.

[blindman]

Larger telescopes carry a higher risk of injury, but we suspect larger telescopes are less common since they cost more.

What a crap!

If it is true, NASA should be banned from such a stupid attempts!

Maybe global petition would help?

[Wavytone]

What would more likely nail it is to let pilots know they stand a risk of being blinded - even temporarily - by laser flashes while flying at night. The aviation authorities have zero tolerance to this sort of thing and may have the authority to stop it and tell NASA a looud no, find another solution.

[billdan]

I hope our nanny govt' doesn't read this.

"Due to the risk of eye injuries caused by looking through a telescope, all personal telescopes must be handed in to be crushed and only authorised govt' agencies can use telescopes. A $1000 fine will be issued for non-compliance"