|
Reach out
Jacob Strikis
Director: Elizabeth Observatory of Athens, President: Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association and Thrace Amateur Astronomy Association, Greece
Children imagine the universe in a way that adults forgot a lot time ago. They have a unique way of understanding that makes me want to travel with them inside the Universe.
To share astronomy effectively with young children, you need patience, time and you have to be willing to speak at their level. Tell stories and play games with them. Try to find ways to make their interest bigger and bigger.
Teachers make a great mistake when they think that a short visit to the local planetarium is enough. It is never enough! It is just the beginning. After that the children feel the need for a telescope to discover the universe with their own eyes. This is where you are needed. If you have access to an observatory with a big refractor telescope and a friend in a local astronomy club, that is your chance to contribute to communicating astronomy. (A huge refractor is important for a kid which most of the times knows astronomy from an old picture of a guy looking inside a very big tube 10 meters length.)
When children come to your observatory do not let them look only through the main telescope. Set up small, cheap, portable telescopes too. Involve the parents and make them understand that looking the stars is better than drugs or fast cars!
When talking to older children, you must also talk about the importance of studying the Universe. You can also do experiments with them like making a telescope with magnifying lens or a small spectroscope with the back of a CD. Try to record a meteor shower with a sensitive web-camera or adjust that camera to a small telescope to observe the satellites of Jupiter and then try to explain why this happens.
Personally I prefer to help young people do their own research project. For two years I was working with a team aged between 18 and 21. I helped them to make a spectrograph and put it on a small refractor telescope. In those two years they did extraordinary research in stellar spectroscopy. They took spectra of 30 stars, 20 bright nebulas, the Andromeda Galaxy and finally the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun, as well as the Solar Corona during the 2006 total solar eclipse participating in a scientific mission for the study of Solar Corona. This trip to the world of science made them to understand better the job of a professional astronomer and how real scientists think and organise a research project of any kind.
|
