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by Paul LeFevre
This week I have 4 generations of my family in my home...my mother and grandmother are visiting for my son's 3rd birthday (yesterday), and it's been an enjoyable time.
My grandmother and recently-passed-away grandfather on my mother's side were the people who planted the seeds of astronomy in my young mind. I remember fondly going to their home and looking through their 6" Criterion RV-6 scope, getting my first glimpse of Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons, and other wonders. It was they who taught me about the night sky, and though it took almost 30 years for the seeds they planted to germinate, I owe them much for what they taught me. All of which makes what happened Sunday night even more strange.
We took advantage Sunday night of a rare fogless summer night in San Francisco, and brought out Big Blue, my 6" Dob (soon to be retired)for a quick look at the moon and whatever else I could find. I was relishing the chance to show how much I've learned to my grandmother (who doesn't want to show off for grandma?), and we were having a great time pointing out constellations, talking about the moon, etc. Everyone was enjoying views of the moon at the telescope, when I noticed that Hercules and M13 were almost straight up, and with the clear night I figured the SF light pollution would be mild enough to spot the Great Cluster. Sure enough, I whipped right over to it, and though lacking in contrast a bit it was still a good view. My mother came up to the eyepiece, and I told her this was a globular cluster some 21,000 light years away, consisting of millions of stars grouped together orbiting the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
"How do they get light from the sun if they're so far away?"
Lump in my throat. Look of astonishment on my face. This question had come from my mother..."Huh?" was all I could manage.
"I mean, I heard that the sunlight that falls on some planets is very dim, so how can those stars get light from the sun so far away?"
"Um, Mom, they don't get light from our sun -- they ARE suns. Our sun is just a run-of-the-mill star, one of billions of stars just in our own galaxy, and each star you see with your naked eye, or with the telescope like these millions of stars in M13, each give off their own light just like our sun does."
"They do? I thought the sun was the only thing that gave off light."
It's amazing how things skip a generation. Baldness, some recessive traits, and apparently astronomy. Even when I wasn't actively observing, I remembered the lessons my grandmother taught me, and was always fascinated by anything "scientific." My mother is an intelligent woman, in her sixties, with a lifetime of knowledge and experience...but she thought our sun lit everything she saw in the night sky. I was flabbergasted. All my grandmother could say was, "I never taught her that..."
Once back inside, I handed my mother a copy of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and told her to read it to find more information during her spare time here (she IS reading it).
If my own mother -- who has been exposed to astronomy since she was a child -- has such limited knowledge of the workings of the universe and such strange ideas, it makes me wonder what the public at large thinks when they look up at the night sky. It also makes me wonder what our representatives in Congress think, and I more easily understand when they cut funds for space exploration and scientific programs...they just don't know any better! Clearly we all have a lot of work to do educating others about the universe they live in...