High-Resolution Two-Channel Spec- Percy J

journal Issue 12 | May 2012

Communicating Astronomy with the Public

Rock’n’Astronomy Astronomy meets pop-rock How Do We Know What Works? Reaching our Target Audiences Cerberus The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment

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www.capjournal.org This enhanced-colour image shows sand dunes trapped in an impact crater in Noachis Terra, Mars. Dunes and sand ripples of various shapes and sizes display the natural beauty created by physical processes. The area covered in the image is about 1 kilometre

News across. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona. They say that all good things take time.... But it has taken almost a year to create this new issue of CAPjournal, and clearly this is too long even for the CAPjournal. The CAPjournal is produced on a voluntary basis, with logis- tical and editorial support provided by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the European Southern Obser- vatory and EU Universe Awareness. Everyone involved had expected to have more time available to dedicate to the CAPjournal in the years following the International Year of Astronomy 2009. However, we have found ourselves busier than ever, with many new and exciting projects in astronomy communication and education. Apologies for this.

But things are moving in a positive direction for the CAPjournal. The IAU is currently reorganising its education and public outreach efforts within the framework of the IAU Strategic Plan for the Developing World. On the public outreach front, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan is just concluding the process of finding an IAU Public Out- reach Coordinator (POC), who will coordinate efforts from around the world to promote public awareness, appreciation and education of astronomy and related sciences. As part of this remit, the IAU POC will take over editorship of Contents CAPjournal — if all goes well from as soon as the next issue. With this dedicated effort CAPjournal will return to a publication schedule of three issues per year. Stay tuned for more Explained in 60 Seconds: A collaboration with developments on www.astro4dev.org. Symmetry Magazine, a Fermilab/SLAC publication 4 Returning to the current issue, it may have been a long time Multiverso: in the making, but we hope that it was well worth the wait: Rock’n’Astronomy 7 the authors in this issue share their insights on a wide range of topics, ranging from rock’n’roll to evaluation, from history How Do We Know What Works? 9 to citizen science.

Santa and the Moon 13 Happy reading,

Astronomy Outreach in the Remote Mid West Region of Western Australias 16

Medieval Stars in Melk Abbey 19

Astronomy Week in Madeira, Portugal 24

Cerberus: The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment 28

Carbon Based Lifeforms @ Cosmonova: A Concert in Sight and Sound for IYA2009 35

Visualising Astronomy: Visualising Exoplanets 37 Pedro Russo Colophon 38 Editor-in-Chief

Cover: This image was taken in 2011 over Jökulsárlón, the largest glacial lake in Iceland. Stephane Vetter combined six exposures to capture not only two green auroral rings, but their reflections off the serene lake. Credit: S. Vetter/TWAN Explained in 60 Seconds: A collaboration with Symmetry Magazine, a Fermilab/SLAC publication Best Practices Best

Joe Bernstein Keywords Argonne National Laboratory Redshift, Explained in 60 Seconds

Redshift The approaching sound waves are com- In the 1990s, astronomers measuring the pressed and the receding sound waves are redshifts of distant, bright objects discov- Redshift is the observed change in the col- stretched, causing you to hear different fre- ered that they are further away than one our of light emitted by a star or other celes- quencies. would have expected from the expansion tial object that is moving away from Earth. of the Universe as influenced by grav- You experience a similar effect with light ity alone. Confirmed by more recent ob- Light, like sound, travels in waves that are emitted by a moving object. The wavelength servations, the discovery means that the stretched or compressed when the source of light appears shorter for an approaching Universe is expanding at an increasing or the observer is in motion. Imagine a object and longer for a receding one. In the rate. This accelerated expansion is thought passing train blowing its horn: You hear visible spectrum of light, the longest wave- to be caused by dark energy, the physical a high-pitched sound as it approaches lengths are red, so the light from a receding nature of which is one of the most compel- and a low-pitched sound as it recedes. source is said to be “redshifted”. ling mysteries of modern science.

Figure 1. Artist’s Impression of the Doppler effect. Credit: Symmetry Magazine/Sandbox Studio.

4 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012

Multiverso: Rock’n’Astronomy Best Practices Best

José Antonio Caballero Keywords Centro de Astrobiología Astronomy, Arts, Music, Poetry Madrid, Spain E-mail: [email protected]

Summary

In the last few years, there have been several projects involving astronomy and classical music. But have a rock band ever appeared at a science conference or an astronomer at a rock concert? We present a project, Multiverso, in which we mix rock and astronomy, together with poetry and video art (Caballero, 2010). The project started in late 2009 and has already reached tens of thousands people in Spain through the release of an album, several concert-talks, television, radio, newspapers and the internet.

[...] que las estrellas deben ocupar su distancia

para que no se extingan cuando abajo las mire.

[...] that the stars must hold their distance

for not being gone out when I see them from below.

Enrique Morente (Tarantos griegos, Pablo de Málaga, 2009)

First movement: Allegro con brio the Andromeda Galaxy with your small telescope, and have explained to your daugh- Imagine that you are an astronomer, and ter why Pluto is no longer a planet. Imagine use your fingers only to type in target co- that you are a musician who, after a “cos- ordinates at the telescope, reduce images mic fluke”, gives a talk that follows one from and spectra with IRAF, or write papers a Nobel Laureate who discovered the cos- for scientific publications like Astronomy mic microwave background radiation. & Astrophysics, and are unable to play an electric guitar. Yet you also love mu- Such “cosmic flukes” sometimes happen. sic, work in front of the computer wearing The musician is Antonio Arias, the leader headphones, and dream of playing with of the rock band Lagartija Nick; I am the your favourite rock band in a tumultuous astronomer; and the first person to nim- concert. Imagine then, that after a “cosmic bly climb the stage and warmly congratu- fluke”, you share the stage with the band late us on our astro-rock show was a cor- whose tunes you have hummed since you dial, venerable Nobel prize winner named Figure 1. Cover of the album Multiverso by Antonio were a teenager. Robert W. Wilson.... Yes, the Wilson of Arias. The white dome is home to the 2.2-metre tele- “Penzias & Wilson”! scope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, Spain. Credit: A. Arias. Imagine being a rock star who played a leading role in the best Spanish album of the 90s (Omega, with Enrique Morente), that Second movement: Andante con the radar echoes from Titan’s surface re- your songs are routinely played by Radio 3 moto ceived by ESA’s Huygens probe during the (a Spanish national radio station similar to last few kilometres of its descent3,4), with BBC Radio 2), but that you are never have This is what happened during the clos- a historical lecture on the relationship be- been able to detect an exoplanet or a gal- ing ceremony of the International Year of tween music and astronomy illustrated axy at a high redshift. Yet you love astron- Astronomy 2009, in Granada, Spain1,2. with fancy images and videos, followed by omy, regularly observe Moon craters and There, we mixed space sounds (such as a rock concert given by members of the

6 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012

Figure 2. Three different moments during the closing ceremony of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 in Granada, Spain: Robert W. Wilson during his talk, “The discovery of cosmic microwave radiation (CMBR)”; the author during the performance of Génesis, a musical track based on a David Jous poem on the Big Bang and CMBR; and part of the rock band (Florent, Julián, Antonio and Popi, from left to right) during the performance of Mar de la Tranquilidad. Credit: E. Trinchant. most famous bands in Granada: Lagartija ence magazine on astronomy in Spanish starts with the peculiar noises of the dome Nick, Lori Meyers and, of course, Los (Caballero, 2007). Antonio Arias read the and encoders of the 2.2-metre telescope Planetas5 (The Planets). article and liked it. We made contact and I of the Calar Alto7 observatory, in Almería provided him with some astronomical im- (Spain), which merge with a pulsar-like The whole story had started much ear- ages for the booklet for his next album, El sound, a bass guitar, an electric guitar, a lier. The full version, starting at the very Shock de Leia (2007). However, the turn- drum kit and, finally, Antonio Arias’s voice: beginning, with Thoth, Euterpe, Urania, ing point came when I wrote another out- Pythagoras, Johannes Kepler, William reach article for AstronomíA on poetry and L’ordre matemàtic simula el món real, Herschel, Gustav Holst, David Bowie and astronomy (Caballero, 2009). Most of the crea un altre món de càlcul i mental. Brian May as the main characters, has selected poems were in Spanish, but there En el ordenador renacen las estrellas, been already told elsewhere. So I will sim- were also a few in English, Catalonian, Latin como hace tantos años nacieron. ply go back to early 2006, when I had and even kanji. The following verses were Somos como creadores.... just finished writing up my PhD thesis written by Al-Mu’tamid, an Andalusian- on substellar objects. Each thesis chap- Arabian king of Seville in the 11th century: The mathematical order simulates the real ter was headed with lyrics, extracts and world, verses of the songs that I had listened Luego, cuando la Luna quiso pasearse ha- it creates other world of calculus and mind. to while I was in front of the computer. cia Oriente, In the computer the stars are reborn, While Claude Bertout’s review on T Tauri levantó por encima de sí a Orión como un like they were born so many years ago. stars (Bertout, 1989) started with Leonard dosel, We are like creators.... Cohen’s Another Night With Telescope, my y las estrellas avanzaron a sus lados chapter headers looked like this: como batallones que alzaban a las A set of poetry books that David Jou sent Pléyades por bandera. us in early 2009 were a gold mine: the lyr- ¡No hay atmósfera ni viento ni lluvia ics of four songs in Multiverso are written sobre el Océano de las Tempestades! Next, when the Moon wished to wander to- by him. One of them is El ordenador sim- ¡Agua para el Mar de las Nubes! wards the East, ula el nacimiento de las estrellas (The com- ¡Agua para el Mar de los Vapores! it lifted Orion above itself like a canopy, puter simulates the birth of stars), part of and the stars moved forward at its sides which is shown above. David Jou is a pro- There is neither atmosphere nor wind nor like battalions that raised the Pleiades as fessor of condensed matter physics at rain flag. the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona on Oceanus Procellarum! and also a poet with works translated into Water for Mare Nubium! A couple of weeks after its publication, English, German, French and Russian. Water for Mare Vaporum! Antonio Arias phoned me: “Jose, I am pre- Multiverso also includes lyrics by other paring three or four songs based on the renowned poets, such as José Emilio These selenographic verses form the cho- poems in your article.” Having said that Pacheco. By chance, on the day of the rus of Mar de la Tranquilidad, a Lagartija Lagartija Nick is my favourite Spanish rock album premiere, it was announced that Nick song from their 1999 album of the band, I was almost moved to tears when I Pacheco had received the Miguel de same name. There you can also find heard that.... Cervantes Prize (the Spanish equivalent of Newton-Espacio 1999, with statements by the Nobel Prize for Literature). the Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque, Pulsar or Azora 67, the only song that I know about Third movement: Scherzo. Allegro The last track of the album lasts over seven fighting light pollution. After receiving my minutes and has no lyrics. During the prep- doctorate, I wrote an outreach article on The three or four songs became a dozen aration of the album, I had told Antonio music and astronomy that became a cover and, after a few months, Antonio Arias had about Johannes Kepler’s Harmonices story for AstronomíA, the first popular sci- released Multiverso6, his first solo album. It Mundi, the medieval concept of Musica

FooterMultiverso: Main Rock’n’Astronomy Title 7 FooterMultiverso: Main Rock’n’Astronomy Title

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Figure 3. Pictures taken during astro-concerts at the Teatro Isidoro Máiquez, Granada (Juano, Antonio, Julián), Sala el Sol, Madrid (Xarim, Antonio, Popi), and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Nayra, Antonio), the most recent with an image of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider in the background. Credits: M. Calle (www.indy- rock.es) and Ávatar (laletracapital.blogspot.com).

Universalis, the Music of the Spheres, and the project can be found at http://exoterrae. Notes its 20th century musical readout that is eu/usc/ (the outreach project now receives flying beyond the Solar System with the the name “unitedsoundsofcosmos”). 1 http://www.astronomia2009.es/Ano_ Voyager spacecraft. To satisfy me, Antonio Internacional_de_la_Astronomia_ prepared Harmonia Mundi 2009, the first Despedida_Multiversos.html music of the spheres to include only eight Acknowledgements 2 http://astronomia2009.es/Sobre_el_AIA- planets (i.e. without Pluto). IYA2009/Ceremonias_AIA-IYA2009/Acto_ Of course, the Rock’n’Astronomy project de_Despedida_del_AIA-IYA2009.html would not have come to pass without the 3 http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/ Fourth movement: Allegro most important person, the music com- SEM85Q71Y3E_0.html poser, vocalist, guitar and bass player: 4 http://www.spacesounds.com After the release of Multiverso and our par- Antonio Arias. But the two of us want to re- 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Planetas ticipation in the closing ceremony of the spectfully remember a very special person 6 http://www.myspace.com/antonioariasmulti- Spanish IYA2009, I made a short appear- and artist who recently left behind millions verso ance at the beginning of one of Antonio’s of flamenco orphans: maestro Enrique 7 http://www.caha.es rock concerts at a club in Madrid: can you Morente. 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_(band) imagine the faces of the public when they 9 saw a science freak telling them that MUSE http://muse.univ-lyon1.fr/ is not only a famous rock band8, but also References 10 http://obrasocial.lacaixa.es/nuestroscentros/ the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer9 at cosmocaixabarcelona/cosmocaixabarce- ESO’s Very Large Telescope? Bertout, C. 1989, T Tauri stars – Wild as dust, lona_es.html ARA&A, 27, 351 11 http://carmenes.caha.es/ Next, we tried to obtain a grant from the Caballero J. A. 2007, La Música y la 12 http://exoterrae.eu/usc/”. Spanish Ministry of Science to take our Astronomía, AstronomíA, 95, 26 astro-rock show on tour through Spain, Caballero J. A. 2009, La Poesía y la but did not succeed. However, somebody Astronomía, AstronomíA, 116, 24 read our funding proposal and we were Caballero J. A., González Sánchez, S. & invited to perform our show during the Caballero I. 2010, Music and Astronomy, meetings of the professional and amateur Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics V, Astro- Spanish Astronomical Societies in Madrid physics and Space Science Proceedings. in September 2010, where our honoura- Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2010, ble curtain-raiser was Carlos S. Frenk, the p. 548 director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at the University of Durham. Biography Further Reading As I write these lines, Antonio and I are preparing a new astro-rock show to be held Franknoi P. 2008, Music inspired by Astron- José A. Caballero is a young Spanish astro- at CosmoCaixa10 Barcelona on Europe’s omy: A selected listing for the International physicist whose interest in astronomy began Museum Day. We are preparing newer and Year of Astronomy, ASPC, 400, 514 when he first saw Star Wars: A New Hope at the age of only four. Now, he is a Ramón y Cajal fel- Lubowich D. A. 2010, Music and Astronomy better videos, images and songs, including low at the Centro de Astrobiología, the co-pro- one devoted to CARMENES11, 12, a German- Under the Stars 2009, ASPC, 431, 47 ject manager of CARMENES and an expert of Spanish high-resolution two-channel spec- Percy J. R. 2009, Tafelmusik’s The Galileo the σ Orionis region, close to the Horsehead trograph that will perhaps detect the first Project: An out-of-this-world IYA2009 arts Nebula. habitable exo-Earth. More information on experience, CAPjournal, 7, 24

8 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, April 2012 How Do We Know What Works?1 Best Practices Best

Oli Usher Oana Sandu Lars Lindberg Christensen ESO education and Outreach Department/ESA ESO education and Outreach Department, ESO education and Outreach Department, Hubble, Germany Germany Germany E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

Keywords Science Communication, Evaluation

Summary

There are many reasons why communicating science with the public is a good idea. There are also many views on how this is best done. This article will not focus directly on these questions, but rather on: how do we know that we are reaching our target audiences, how do we know whether our output is well received — in short, how do we know what works?

Introduction tween NASA and the European Space itor numbers, while a video podcast which Agency (ESA). Since 1999, the well- is shared and re-posted virally is much This article presents experiences from established and highly successful Office harder to assess — this is not a weakness, the press and outreach activities for the of Public Outreach (OPO) at NASA’s Space but simply a recognition that we have to do European Space Agency’s share of the Telescope Science Institute has been com- our job with imperfect information at our Hubble Space Telescope (ESA/Hubble) plemented by a European outreach of- disposal. Nevertheless, with this broad — an integrated part of ESO’s education fice, ESA/Hubble, based at the European range of indicative data we can get a good and Outreach Department (ESO ePOD), Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany. handle on what works and what doesn’t. for which the methods described here While there is extensive cooperation be- also apply. While astronomy is in some re- tween OPO and ESA/Hubble, they remain spects atypical in the broader field of sci- quite separate operations. Effectiveness ence communication (there is a ready, sup- portive and enthusiastic public, which is Outreach for ESA/Hubble takes a number Monitoring the effectiveness of the ESA/ not the case for numerous other sciences), of forms. The primary channels are press Hubble website2 using Google Analytics the methods of gathering data and feed- releases (both of new science results and is arguably the most straightforward ele- back which inform ESA/Hubble’s work are of newly processed images), the space- ment of our evaluation strategy (which is broadly applicable. telescope.org website (which is updated just one part of the larger departmental several times a week with pictures, news strategy). This gives a wealth of informa- ESA/Hubble’s outreach straddles several and videos), video podcasts, and en- tion, not just about reader numbers for in- different forms of communication — in- gagement with the community via social dividual pages but also on the paths read- teraction with the media (which inevitably networks. Due to the complexity of the in- ers take through the website, geographical takes a top-down approach), direct com- formation flow in modern day society, the location, technical info, and many other munication with the public via informa- dividing lines between these are of course metrics. As would be expected, the read- tion and videos on the web (similarly top- not always clear-cut — press releases are ership fluctuates considerably depending down), and a growing effort to engage with read by the public on our website; vid- on how much Hubble appears in the news, audiences-as-stakeholders via blogs and eos from our podcasts are widely used by but there is a constant baseline thanks to social media (a bottom-up approach). In broadcasters; social media reach opinion the sizeable archive of news stories, im- this respect, ESA/Hubble bridges the di- leaders and journalists. ages and videos. Note that the materials vide between the traditional “public under- on the site are made available for repro- standing of science” models of science Different types of communication have to duction with very open licensing conditions communication and contemporary “pub- be assessed in different ways, and it’s im- (Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution), which lic engagement with science” models. As portant to understand that it is not an ex- encourages dissemination of Hubble sci- such, its operations could be of broad in- act science. The purpose of monitoring ence and images to a wide audience, terest in the science communication com- output is not to write up the results in a sci- but inevitably makes any analysis of how munity. entific journal, but rather to inform and di- broadly it is used incomplete. In 2010, we rect the work of the organisation towards ran a competition asking members of the The Hubble Space Telescope is a pro- what is most effective. The impact of a web public to identify cases of Hubble imagery gramme of international co-operation be- page can easily be measured through vis- in popular culture, which brought many to

CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 9 How Do We Know What Works?

sically interesting they are. In general our store’s subject areas. Hubblecast HD is experience shows that the most impor- consistently in the top ten video podcast tant and intrinsically interesting stories or series in the science and medicine cate- images make the press releases with the gory in the UK, US and Germany, along- most impact and penetration. side Hidden Universe, the Spitzer Space Telescope’s official podcast, PBS Nova Qualitative monitoring of press release im- and NASAcast. Note that these statis- pacts is by its nature less complete, but it tics are for the 720p HD version of the Figure 1. The Hubblecast, presented by Dr Joe Liske gives a complementary view of press cov- Hubblecast alone — our standard defini- (aka Dr J) is one of the most popular science vodcasts erage. We use Meltwater’s online news and tion and 1080p Full HD videos are listed on iTunes. It is also widely shared on YouTube, where monitoring of magazines and newspapers separately and do not count towards success is harder to quantify. Credit: ESA/Hubble. in print to build up a library of press clip- Hubblecast HD’s rankings. These also pings. This serves as an archive — a form perform well, with the Full HD edition fre- our attention, but this was only scratching of feedback on the effectiveness of our quently in the top ten too. This means the the surface. press releases. true position of the Hubblecast (all versions combined) is higher than it appears — it We monitor the impact of press releases Since 2007, ESA/Hubble has produced the may be the most popular science video both quantitatively and qualitatively. The Hubblecast, one of the first HD video pod- podcast in the world — but impossible to quantitative approach is essentially biblio- casts (see Christensen & Hurt, 2008). It has measure quantitatively since iTunes pro- metric — the number of times a story’s key- since established itself as one of the most vides only relative rankings rather than ab- words appear in Meltwater, an online news popular sources of audiovisual science solute viewing figures. monitoring service (this figure, although ad- mittedly only a small part of the total media Charts of individual episodes are obviously coverage, is our proxy for how many times more volatile and we do not keep a reg- a story has been picked up in the media); ular tab on these — ad hoc checks sug- combined with page views on our website gest we frequently have episodes in the as measured by Google Analytics (a proxy top ten, but not always. We have elected for public interest); and hits in Eurekalert, a not to monitor these charts systemati- science press release service (a proxy for cally; there are simply too many variables journalists’ interest in a story). at work. Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence suggests that, if anything, our longer epi- These figures vary considerably between sodes (six to ten minutes) are more popu- press releases, and the impact is not nec- lar than the shorter ones (three to five min- essarily immediate or predictable. While in- utes). Dire warnings of the short attention terest typically peaks in the few days follow- spans of internet users seem not to be jus- ing a release date, it can sometimes have a tified in this case. second burst of life — we are regularly con- tacted by people who use images in com- While these iTunes statistics give an idea mercial products, TV programmes, books, Figure 2. The Hubble website, spacetelescope.org. of how successful our video podcasts are etc, years after they are first published. A Google Analytics produces detailed statistics about relative to other comparable ones, they broad approach combining qualitative and readership, traffic sources and popularity of content. don’t offer any absolute numbers. While Credit: ESA/Hubble. even anecdotal evidence with quantitative we can, in principle, track subscribers to data helps see this broader picture. the podcast (both those who subscribe news on the internet. Each issue focuses through iTunes and those who do so di- Press releases vary in their immediate on a single topic, for example a new dis- rectly from spacetelescope.org) via Google impact too — certain “sexy topics” (exo- covery, or a presentation of Hubble obser- Feedburner, it is in fact very hard to gain planets, black holes, record holders such vations of a particular object, or a certain any meaningful insight from these figures. as most distant galaxies or most mas- type of observation. To use some science Our total of around 30 000 subscribers is sive stars) are naturally more media- communication buzzwords, they cover based on the number of users whose cli- friendly than others (such as cosmology). both downstream (scientific results, ob- ent software checks our feed every day, Pictures and illustrations, of course, help servations) and upstream (methods, tech- which is not a particularly useful number. a great deal, particularly in the general in- nology, etc) topics. More meaningful, but still problematic, is terest press — we have a small team of Feedburner’s measurement of “reach” — graphic designers and image processing Hubblecasts are distributed through the the number of downloads initiated per day experts to provide world-class visuals with iTunes store and on dozens of video shar- through the feed. This figure of around our press releases. But regardless of how ing websites including YouTube and Vimeo. 2500 per day is more useful, but a small good a press release is and how well pro- Rankings from iTunes are easy to get hold caveat needs to be mentioned: subscrib- cessed the graphics are, some topics will of — the software offers a “most popular” ing to a podcast in software like iTunes inevitably have a bigger or smaller impact selection both for podcast series and for automatically downloads new episodes re- than others simply because of how intrin- individual podcast episodes in any of the gardless of whether they are ever watched.

10 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

Facebook fans 5-Jan 5-Feb 5-Mar 5-Apr 5-May 5-Jun 5-Jul 5-Aug 5-Sep 5-Oct 5-Nov 5-Dec 5-Jan 5-Feb 5-Mar 5-Apr 100,000 0 ESO Facebook Fans Hubble Facebook Fans 90,000 Hubblecast 10 HD Science 80,000 UK iTunes 70,000 20 Hubblecast 60,000 HD Science 30 US iTunes 50,000

40 EC HD 40,000 Science UK 30,000 50 iTunes 20,000 EC HD 60 Science US 10,000 iTunes 2010-Apr 2010-Jun-01 2010-Aug-01 2010-Sep-01 2010-Nov-01 2010-Dec-01 2011-Feb-01 2011-Mar 2011-Apr 2011-Jun-01 2011-Aug-01 2011-Sep-01 2011-Nov-01 2011-Dec-01 2012-Feb-01 2012-Mar 2010-Oct-01 2011-Jan-01 2011-Oct-01 2012-Jan-01 2010-May-01 2011-May-01 0 2010-Jul-01 2011-Jul-01 70 -01 -01

80 -01 -01

Figure 3. This graph shows the five day rolling average position of the HD edition Figure 4. This graph shows the progression in Facebook fans for Hubble since Jan- of the Hubblecast, in the US and UK stores. Equivalent figures for the ESOcast are uary 2010. Equivalent figures for ESO are included for context. Credit: The authors. included for context. Credit: ESA/Hubble.

Performance of the Hubblecast on YouTube stream media. Social media have opened ited amount of information that can fit into can give a clearer idea of public reception a door for science communicators into fewer than 140 characters! than subscriber or download statistics — a fascinating territory — one where “the partly through viewing figures, which are public” is made up of individuals with per- Secondly, in addition to disseminating in- publicly available, but also through user sonal opinions, ideas and preferences that formation we also try to encourage people comments. Here again, though, our cop- make them opinion leaders in their own on- to engage in a dialogue with other Hubble yright policy, which is such a help at dis- line community. Each individual connects and astronomy fans. This makes people seminating Hubble science and images, with hundreds of other individuals and cre- more enthusiastic about our discoveries is a hindrance to evaluating precisely the ates their own sphere of influence. It is in so that they want to learn more, and also success of our science communication this complex landscape that information share the information with their friends. Our strategies: the vast majority of views of spreads, traveling from one group to an- goal is to transform passive consumers of Hubblecasts on YouTube are actually not other. The power of socially fuelled word information into active, engaged ambas- through the official channel at youtube. of mouth is incredible, but also incredibly sadors in their own online communities, com/hubbleesa, but through users who hard to monitor. helping us take Hubble from one sphere to legally upload the video to their own ac- another in this vast social universe. This en- counts and share the videos themselves. The main channels ESA/Hubble uses thusiastic and engaged audience can be to engage with its online communities used to feed back into other areas of our It is quite common for these re-uploaded are Facebook and Twitter. We also use work: for instance, requests and questions videos each to have hundreds of thou- YouTube and Vimeo for sharing our videos from our fans on Facebook and Twitter sands of views and hundreds of user com- and Flickr for our photos, but most of the formed the basis of the 50th episode of ments. While the quality of user comments interaction between ESA/Hubble and its the Hubblecast, which took the form of a on YouTube is far from being legendary, it community happens on the ESA/Hubble question and answer session. can at least give some idea of public inter- Facebook Fan Page and on its Twitter feed. est and appreciation. The potential of viral information is enor- mous and hard to keep track of, but not The complex interaction with users, as well We use both channels for two main completely obscure. Even if the impact of as instant (if ambiguous or throwaway) purposes social media is hard to grasp, there are still feedback on YouTube is typical of the fourth a number of indicators that tell us whether major aspect of Hubble outreach (after Firstly, we share all our scientific results our input has brought results and how press work, web content and audiovisual) and images, drawing more attention to many resources we should continue to in- — community interaction, primarily through our science and photo releases and we vest in social media. social media. This is the primary mecha- also promote our Pictures of the Week and nism for public dialogue in our outreach op- Hubblecast episodes when they are pub- For our Facebook page we do a quantita- erations, ensuring that we carry out best lished. This helps us to communicate our tive evaluation that focuses on the num- practice in science communication. output to the online community and directs ber of fans we have. This number has been them to where they can find further infor- constantly growing — to more than 75 000 Engaging with online communities has rap- mation. Social media messages have to be at the time of writing (December 2011), idly grown into one of ESA/Hubble’s main concise and appealing, so these channels which makes ESA/Hubble the most pop- outreach methods in recent years: the so- are not suitable for explaining science — ular Facebook page among astronomical cial media are experiencing an explosion they serve instead to stimulate interest, en- observatories. in their journey from new media to main- gagement and curiosity. There’s only a lim-

CAPjournal,How Do We No. Know 12, April What 2012 Works? 11 How Do We Know What Works?

spacetelescope.org 2011-2012: News Popularity cripple the output (for example by enforc- Meltwater press clippings (x 250) 140000 ing strict copyright terms) in the name of Eurekalert (x 10) measuring it properly. 120000 Google Analytics (x 1)

100000 References 80000

60000 Christensen, L. L. & Hurt, R. 2008, A Hands-on Guide to Video Podcasting, 40000 CAPjournal 2

20000 1-sci 3-sci 6-sci 7-pho* 9-pho 10-pho 11-sci 12-pho 13-sci 14-pho 15-Pho 16-sci 17-sci 18-pho 1-sci 2-photo 3-sci 4-sci 4-pho 5-pho 8-pho 5-pho 0 2-pho* Notes

1 This is an extended and updated version of Figure 5. Popularity of the news releases published 2011 and 2012 on spacetelescope.org. The news releases an article that was published on EuroScien- are identified by their release number and type. Credit: The authors. tist.com in April 2011 2 www.spacetelescope.org However, since everything we post on our In the case of Twitter, evaluation is even page is publicly available to everyone, not harder because the platform does not have only to our fans, people do not necessarily a well-established monitoring service. Until Biographies have to “Like” our page in order to see the recently, all we could do was to keep track contents. For this reason, there are several of the number of followers (around 6000 as more relevant indicators that show some of December 2011) which shows a steady Oli Usher studied History and Philosophy of very impressive numbers. Facebook of- increase over time. We then looked at Science at University College London and the fers page administrators a service called Google Analytics and saw that Twitter was University of Cambridge, and has written widely about science, technology and their place in Insights, which provides interesting statis- also bringing more and more people to the society. At Cambridge, he became interested in tics. website, which was reason enough to be- science communication when he studied how lieve that we were reaching and engaging flawed government decisions about how to In November 2011 we had 1.25 million with more Twitter users. However, we had communicate scientific information led to public mistrust of medical science. Before coming to post views — the number of times people no other data and we could not analyse ESO, he worked as a journalist, writing science have viewed a news feed story — which what worked best. stories for a range of publications in print and is almost twice the number of website pa- online, including The Guardian and the London- geviews for that month. A narrower view of In spring 2011, HootSuite, a software plat- based political magazine Tribune. user interaction is the number of people form used to manage social media ac- Oana Sandu works as community coordina- who have commented on, liked or shared counts launched an evaluation tool that tor for ESO’s education and Public Outreach one of our posts, which gives a more mod- generates reports on individual account Department (ePOD). She is responsible for the est figure of around 10 000 per month. activity and its impact. As we gather data promotion of outreach products or events and from this, we should be able to gain new the social media presence of both ESO and ESA/Hubble. With a degree in Communication Another interesting factor to take into ac- insights and spot new trends in our social and Public Relations and a Master’s Degree in count is that if we look at Google Analytics media use. Marketing, she worked for two years in a lead- we see that among traffic sources, ing PR agency from Eastern Europe. As a vol- Facebook is number two in most months, unteer, she was involved in projects such as right after Google’s search engine. This Global Astronomy Month, the Space Gener- Conclusions ation Congress and World Space Week. She means that we have a large community keeps a blog on astronomy communication reading our news on Facebook and many Analysing the success of outreach ef- at www.astronomycommunication.wordpress. of these people go on to look at our web- forts is not a simple matter of clean, un- com. To get in touch with Oana you can connect site. This number varies a lot, depending ambiguous statistics. It relies on educated on Twitter (twitter.com/oanasandu) or Face- book (facebook.com/oana.sandu). on factors such as the topic of the story, guesses and common sense too, because the day or the hour when it was posted. we function with an imperfect dataset. Lars Lindberg Christensen is a science com- Luckily, it is possible to drill down in these munication specialist heading the ESO educa- statistics and see which posts have had However the purpose of evaluating scien- tion and Public Outreach Department (ePOD) the most views and thus which topics are tific outreach is not to come up with de- in Munich, Germany. He is responsible for public outreach and education for the La Silla-Par- of more interest for fans. tailed, accurate statistics which can be anal Observatory, for ESO’s part of ALMA and published, but rather to assess whether APEX, for the European Extremely Large Tel- Facebook also collects data about the what we do actually works. Effective eval- escope (the largest optical telescope in plan- gender and age of Facebook friends, as uation holds a paradoxical position, in that ning), for ESA’s part of the Hubble Space Tel- escope and for the International Astronomical well as the countries and cities where the it should be both tightly integrated with Union Press Office. Lars has more than 100 accounts are most popular, which can be science communication work, and clearly publications to his credit, most of them in pop- an important variable if it’s necessary to secondary to it. If there is one thing worse ular science communication and in its theory. justify a local impact. than not measuring output at all, it is to

12 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 Santa and the Moon Reviews

Peter Barthel Keywords Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Books, Moon Phases, Christmas University of Groningen, The Netherlands E-mail: [email protected]

Summary

This article reflects on the use of illustrations of the Moon in images of Santa Claus, on Christmas gift-wrapping paper and in children’s books, in two countries which have been important in shaping the image of Santa Claus and his predecessor Sinterklaas: the USA and the Netherlands. The appearance of the Moon in Halloween illustrations is also considered. The lack of either knowledge concerning the physical origin of the Moon’s phases, or interest in understanding them, is found to be widespread in the Netherlands, but is also clearly present in the USA, and is quite possibly global. Certainly incomplete, but surely representative, lists that compile occurrences of both scientifically correct and scientifically incorrect gift- wrapping paper and children’s books are also presented.

Introduction midnight in movie scenes. Illustrations To quantify the level of ignorance con- which show Moon crescents are also occa- cerning the phase of the evening Moon re- Images of the Moon are often used to in- sionally wrong: third quarter Moons or wan- lated to the Sinterklaas, Santa Claus and dicate an evening or night scene, not only ing crescents are depicted when the actual the Christmas season, a (jolly) research as illustrations in books (for adults and scene is in the evening. A 2010 UNICEF project was conducted, examining illus- children), but also on product packag- Christmas card as well as the opening trations in children’s books, on gift-wrap- ing, brochures, greetings cards, gift-wrap- scene in the 2010 Jacquie Lawson ani- ping paper, and on Christmas cards, both ping paper, in advertising, commercials, as mated Advent e-Calendar — both widely in the USA and in the Netherlands. These pictograms, etc. A full Moon is often used, sold items — provided the culmination are the two countries that have shaped the partly hidden behind trees or clouds, but of several years of frowning (and smiling) image of Santa Claus and his name-giver a partially lit Moon — half or crescent — about this misconception or ignorance, Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas, Sint Nicolaas), also frequently appears. The latter case and triggered the research presented be- the benevolent figures who have been of leaves no doubt as to an image’s identi- low. The UNICEF card, of British design1, key importance in commercialising the fication with the Moon; a full Moon could shows children decorating an outdoor December holiday season. The goal of possibly be mistaken for the Sun. There are Christmas tree. Judging from the Moon publishing this research is obviously to fo- two ways of depicting a partially lit Moon: phase, the scene takes place at 4 am or cus educators’ attention on a great oppor- around its first and its last quarters. A cres- 5 am in the morning, which is not impos- tunity to explain the (origin of the) Moon’s cent Moon, on its way towards first quar- sible but unlikely. The village scene that phases, as offered by these happy end-of- ter is called a waxing Moon, and such a opened the 2010 Jacquie Lawson2 digi- year events. The need for such education waxing Moon can be observed in the af- tal Advent Calendar depicts a Christmas has been, for instance, well demonstrated ternoon twilight and in the evening. Its right carol concert, sung in the village square. by the video A Private Universe3. hand side is illuminated, for observers in Whereas the thin waning Moon indicates an the northern hemisphere (left for observers early morning event, the artist undoubtedly in the south). The first quarter Moon sets wants to show us an early evening scene, Theoretical background at midnight, a waxing Moon even earlier. judging from the people on the square and A waning crescent Moon (from third quar- the lights in the houses, shops and the The Sinterklaas and Santa Claus stories ter to new Moon: left hand side illuminated) church. It is just about possible that both are well known and date back to the fourth rises around 3 am, hence can only be ob- artists intended to create Australian scenes century bishop Nicholas of Myra (now served late at night and in the morning twi- with reversed Moon phases, but the pres- Demre, in southern Turkey). Legends of light. The full Moon is directly opposite the ence of snow in both scenes is strongly his generosity and kindness spread over Sun in the sky, and hence rises at sunset. suggestive of the northern hemisphere in Europe and he became the patron saint of December.... The same misunderstanding many groups, cities, and even countries. Moon illustrations are occasionally incor- is frequently seen on gift-wrapping paper The 5 December, the eve of his death, was rect. There are postcards showing artist’s in the Netherlands, displaying Sinterklaas, commemorated with an annual feast in impressions of tropical evenings with both the predecessor of Santa Claus, distrib- many European countries. Following the the Sun and the full Moon close to each uting presents in the evening with a third Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth other. Full Moons sometimes rise around quarter or waning Moon in the sky. century, some countries merged the

CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 13 Santa and the Moon

20% 25% FIRST FIRST

FULL FULL 40% LAST LAST

65% 10%

40%

Figure 1. Book statistics from the Netherlands. Figure 2. Wrapping paper statistics from the Netherlands.

St. Nicholas celebration with Christmas, In summary, illustrations should preferen- but others stuck to 5 December. The char- tially show first quarter or full Moons on acteristic features of benevolence and the Sinterklaas or Santa Claus scenes, unless exchange of gifts obviously hark back to it is clear from the text that Santa’s job is legends around St. Nicholas. Local folk- nearly done (i.e. he has a nearly empty lore was added, which resulted in different sleigh...) Any winter evening scene in gen- flavours for the celebrations in various eral, and certainly those having children countries. Dutch settlers in the New World around, should have a first quarter or full Figure 3. Scientifically correct Sinterklaas gift- celebrated St. Nicholas’ Eve in the 17th Moon, if the artist wants to show one. wrapping paper. Credit: Keyzer Co., Wormerveer, century, and those celebrations evolved The Netherlands: type 090011 (reproduced with permission). through contacts with immigrants of other nationalities. Concerning the transforma- Measurements and results tion to Santa Claus, the importance of the The US research was carried out during author Washington Irving in 1809 and of December events November 2010–January 2011, in New the 1823 poem A visit from Saint Nicholas, All data were obtained in the months England and in Los Angeles: also here commonly known as The night before November 2010–January 2011, and can roughly two dozen book stores, stationery Christmas4, is well documented, as are be found compiled in Tables I through stores, pharmacies and department stores the drawings of Thomas Nast in the 1860s IV, which are available online5. In the were visited. In addition, samples of com- and the Coca Cola advertisements in the Netherlands, two dozen book stores and mercially available wrapping paper and 1930s (e.g., Jones, 1978; Crichton, 1987; department stores were visited, during Christmas cards were inspected on the and www.stnicholascenter.org). November–December 2010. Book illustra- internet. Thirty-three Moon scene images tions depicting Sinterklaas and the Moon selected from 30 different books (Table III) The Dutch Sinterklaas together, with his were examined, with regard to the Moon provide the pie chart statistic as shown in helpers, is believed to distribute his pre- phase. Twenty-five images selected from Figure 4. It is clear that most of the time sents on the evening of 5 December. He 25 books (Table I) provide the pie chart sta- (70%) a full Moon is drawn, but it should may also pay visits during the evenings tistic as shown in Figure 1. It is seen that be noted that 17 of the 30 inspected books and nights before 5 December, leaving 40% of the pictures display the last quar- were renditions by various illustrators of the some candy in shoes set before the fire- ter Moon, which is incorrect. poem A visit from Saint Nicholas. Inspection place, but the main event is the evening of illustrated editions of this poem7 from of the 5th. Once delivered, the presents The Netherlands wrapping paper analysis the 19th and early 20th century indicates are unwrapped during that same even- (20 different designs, from various firms, that the full Moon is indeed shown very ing. Scenes depicting the 5 December department stores and book stores) indi- frequently, throughout the lifetime of this Sinterklaas events should depict waxing, cates an even higher level of misunder- poem. Whereas the text does not explic- first quarter or full Moon (or no Moon) to standing. The chart in Figure 2 indicates a itly mention the full Moon, that Moon phase be scientifically correct. 65% occurrence of the incorrect last quar- may have become implicitly “attached” to ter or waning Moon. There is no reason to its lines over the years: the full Moon more- On Christmas Eve Santa Claus works believe that this statistic is not represent- over provides a nice background for sleigh through the night of 24–25 December to ative, because examination of a collec- and reindeer.... Nevertheless, in several get his job done: the gifts are unwrapped tor’s sample of older Sinterklaas gift wrap6 American books an incorrect waning or on Christmas morning. If a Moon is shown yields the comparable figure of 67% (six third quarter Moon is seen accompanying in a Santa scene that takes place at the out of nine Moon designs incorrect). stories involving children in evening scenes, beginning of the night, its phase should or illustrating Santa with a full sleigh, i.e., at be waxing, quarter or full, otherwise it can It must be concluded that the Dutch are the beginning of a night’s work. The book- have any phase. The poem, A visit from often wrong, both on wrapping paper and let, The Night before Christmas in California Saint Nicholas, has the father witnessing in book illustrations; and more often so in (Smith & Egan, 1992) displays two different Santa’s arrival before going to bed, and the former case. Figure 3 nevertheless pre- Moons (full and waning) during one and the thus in the evening. The Moon “on the sents an example of nice wrapping paper same evening.... breast of the new fallen snow” must have with a correct waxing evening Moon. been a waxing, first quarter, or full Moon to With only a few exceptions, wrapping paper be scientifically correct. and Christmas cards sold in the USA (book

14 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

15% 15% FIRST night to their city or region, display incor- References rect waning moons. FULL Brown, M. W. & Hurd, C. 1947, and later editions, LAST Discussion Goodnight Moon, London: Harper Collins We have established that illustrators and Crichton, R. 1987, Who is Santa Claus? — the 70% designers draw Moons ad libitum, ac- true story behind a living legend, Edinburgh: cording to their taste, but that these il- Canongate Figure 4. USA book statistics. lustrations are often astronomically in- Jones, C. W. 1978, Saint Nicholas of Myra, correct. The most common mistake is Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend, stores, general and department stores, to show the early morning waning Moon Chicago: University of Chicago Press stationery stores and pharmacies: single in an evening scene. Our research fo- Smith, C. & Egan, S. 1992, On the night before cards and boxed sets) were found to discussed on Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, and Christmas, all down 101..., Salt Lake City: play full Moons, with or without Santa. The Christmas scenes, with a short side trip to Gibbs Smith Publ. UNICEF card referred to in the Introduction Sint Maarten and Halloween. The apparent Ungerer, T. 1967, and later editions, Moon represents one of the incorrect cases. Also lack of knowledge concerning the physics Man, London: Harper Collins a 2010 Holiday Delices set (cookies), sold of the Moon phases is most likely wide- by a famous (Fifth Avenue) department spread and not just limited to the countries store, was found displaying a last quarter examined here. Further investigations are Notes Moon at the beginning of a night of hard however outside the scope of the present work by Santa and his crew. It must be con- research. We note in passing that also the 1 http://www.unicefshop.nl/p656-kerstfeest.html cluded that the Americans are occasionally psyche could play a role: people may for 2 www.jacquielawson.com wrong, but not as frequently as the Dutch. instance be more inclined to draw Moon 3 http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html crescents which are open to the right, i.e. 4 The widely known poem, with credit to Clement Other events northern hemisphere waning Moons. Clarke Moore, can be found for instance on Other relevant happy outdoor evening http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19286 events include Trick-or-treat (Halloween, Naturally, the question arises: so what, who (retrieved 7 January 2012). The site http://rpo. the eve of Old Hallows) and Sint Maarten cares? The errors are innocent, somewhat library.utoronto.ca/poem/1312.html (retrieved 7 (Saint Martin), widely celebrated each comparable to incorrectly drawn rainbows, January 2012) attributes it to Henry Livingston, year respectively in the USA, the UK, and with the red colour at the inside of the arc. Jr., following research published in 2000 by Canada (31 October) and the Netherlands, Now, watching beautiful natural phenomena Donald Foster. A critical assessment of the Belgium, France, and Germany (11 like rainbows and Moon crescents is one authorship case can be read on http://www. November). Often carrying lanterns and thing, but understanding them makes them common-place.org/vol-01/no-02/moore/ (retrieved 7 January 2012 costumed, children go from home to a whole lot more interesting. Moreover, un- 5 home, begging for candy or money. Short derstanding leads to knowledge which lasts. http://www.astro.rug.nl/~pdb/santa.html songs about Sint Maarten are performed, A tiny bit of insight, leading to the conclusion (retrieved 7 January 2012) whereas trick-or-treat is obviously accom- that the full Moon, being opposite the Sun, 6 http://www.Sinterklaaspapier.nl panied by an innocent threat to the home rises when the Sun sets and sets when the 7 http://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/ owner’s property. Given that these are Sun rises, so that first quarter Moon, be- henry/illos/editions/index.htm early evening activities, then any Moon ing at ~90 degrees, sets around midnight, 8 Useful Moon phase education webpages are depicted should be waxing, first quarter, and that last quarter Moon, at ~270 de- maintained by NASA and by NOAO: http:// or full. With reference to Table IV, inspec- grees, rises around that time, is required to www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index. tion of eleven American trick-or-treat books avoid making the reported mistakes. The cfm?page=123(retrieved 7 January 2012) indicated five cases (45%) of an incorrect Halloween, Sint Maarten, Sinterklaas, and and http://www.noao.edu/education/ phases(retrieved 7 January 2012). Excellent last quarter Moon, one first quarter, and Santa Claus settings provide wonderful 8 moon phase activities can be found on five full Moons. Three Dutch books dealing opportunities for Moon phase education , http://www.dennisschatz.org/activities.html with Sint Maarten all showed the incorrect through simple naked eye observations. If last quarter Moon. Two of these, however, this paper stimulates that education and were translations from German and Swiss leads to improved understanding, we would editions: it is conceivable that the misun- all be pleased. “You better watch out” is of- derstanding or lack of knowledge is global. ten heard in the December month: it should Biography also be taken literally.... Finally, the well known classic children’s Peter Barthel is astronomy professor at the book Goodnight Moon (Brown & Hurd, Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen in the 1947) displays a correct full (evening) Acknowledgements Netherlands. In 2008, together with his team, Moon, while the various Moon phases are he won the national Dutch science communi- also correctly dealt with in the classic Moon The author acknowledges useful com- cation contest. Since the International Year of Astronomy 2009 he has been collaborating Man (Ungerer, 1967). On a last note, how- ments on the manuscript by Drs Andrew with the professional pianists Elies van der Hei- ever, several titles in the Good Night Our Fraknoi, Bob Sanders, Scott Trager, Piet den and Siebert Nix in the project Keys to the World boardbook series (www.goodnigh- van der Kruit, Gijs Verdoes Kleijn, and par- Stars, merging astronomy and music. tourworld.com), where children say good- ticularly three unknown referees.

Santa and the Moon 15 Astronomy Outreach in the Remote Mid West Region of Western Australia Best Practices Best

Megan Argo Robert Hollow Keywords ASTRON, Institute for Radio Astronomy, the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Radio Astronomy, Square Kilometre Array, Netherlands Australia Outreach E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

Summary

The Square Kilometre Array is a global mega-science project to build the world’s largest radio telescope. One of two shortlisted locations for the telescope is Western Australia’s Mid West region, a geologically stable area with a very low population density making it an ideal location for sensitive radio telescopes. It is vital that the local population, although small, is aware of the project and the impact it will have on the region, so outreach in the local communities is imperative. Over the last few years, many trips have been made to the Mid West with the aim of bringing astronomy to the local population. While outreach in such remote areas brings its own unique challenges, it is every bit as worthwhile as in more traditional locations.

The Square Kilometre Array

A thorough understanding of the physics of the Universe often requires information across much of the electromagnetic spectrum, not just what can be gleaned from visible light with the type of telescopes that the public may be familiar with. Radio astronomy has many important applications and is an essential tool in many diverse fields of astrophysics. At the low energy end of the spectrum, radio waves can pen- etrate the thick, dusty regions often found in the discs of active galaxies for example, providing vital information on star formation processes and gas dynamics that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to Figure 1. Artist’s impression of what part of the completed SKA might look like. Credit: SPDO/TDP/DRAO/ obtain by any other means. Swinburne Astronomy Productions.

While there are numerous radio telescopes • Are we alone? are severely hampered by light pollution, scattered around the planet, the Square radio telescopes are very sensitive to in- Kilometre Array (SKA)1 will be the most Composed of three different types of an- terference from manmade sources such as ambitious array of telescopes ever con- tennas, the array will operate between radio and television transmissions, mobile structed. Radio astronomy is primed to 70 MHz and 10 GHz (wavelengths between phones and pagers, and numerous other help answer some of the big questions in 4 metres and 3 centimetres) and will have modern technologies which generate ra- astronomy, and SKA will provide a huge 50 times the sensitivity and 10 000 times dio waves as a byproduct of their opera- step forward in capabilities. SKA will ad- the survey speed of any current radio tele- tion. There are two locations shortlisted to dress five fundamental unanswered ques- scope. A large fraction of the antennas will host SKA: southern Africa, and Australia/ tions about our Universe: be located in a central core area, but re- New Zealand. Both candidate core sites mote stations will also be located across (Western Australia’s Mid West, and the • Testing the predictions of general relativ- an area the size of a continent. Figure 1 Karoo region of South Africa) have rela- ity — was Einstein right? shows an artist’s impression of what part tively low population densities, and hence • How were the first black holes and stars of the array might look like when complete. low levels of manmade interference, and formed? already host precursor telescopes which • How do galaxies evolve? Any large telescope should be built in the are currently under construction. As well • What generates galactic-scale magnetic best possible location to maximise the sci- as performing exciting new science, these fields? ence output. Just as optical telescopes precursors will act as testbed instruments,

16 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

its have included the communities of Pia Wadjarri, Yalgoo and Yulga Jinna, and the towns of Meekatharra and Cue. Some of these are remote Aboriginal communities, but primary and district high schools in the larger settlements of the Mid West have also been included. Outreach initiatives have also included schools in the larger town of Geraldton, including professional development workshops for local and regional teachers.

Events have also been organised for both Meekatharra and Carnarvon Schools of the Air. Children attending such schools spend most of their time on their home station receiving lessons from teachers via the internet, but regular school camps are held where all the pupils get together in one location for a week or more of activities, and Figure 2. Potential SKA array station placement in Australia and New Zealand overlaid on a population density astronomical viewing nights have been map. Credit: CSIRO. held during such camps. proving new technologies for the full SKA. and contains 29 pastoral stations with a to- In addition to specific outreach in schools, The final site decision will be made in 2012, tal population of approximately 160 people. these visits have engaged the wider com- construction is scheduled to begin in 2016, The main industries in the region are min- munity in the region. Public viewing nights and the first astronomical observations ing, agriculture, fishing and tourism. are often held following a day of activities with SKA should be carried out in 2020. within a school, usually on a nearby oval. There are many communities and more These are community events with entire than 30 schools in the Mid West region, families attending and a friendly social at- The Mid West region six of which are classified as remote by the mosphere. Not only is the region an ex- Australian Department of Education and cellent location for radio telescopes due The Australian/New Zealand candidate Training. Often the population is largely to the low levels of radio interference, the site for the core of SKA is located in the Aboriginal, especially in the remote com- low population density and small number Mid West region of Western Australia (see munities where schools must cater for a of settlements mean that there is also very Figure 2) and is home to the Murchison wide range of ages and abilities in just one little light pollution, making the night sky Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) or two classrooms. In contrast, many of especially dark. where several telescopes are already under the primary-age children living on pasto- construction, including the Australian SKA ral homesteads would have to travel many Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison hundreds of kilometres to reach their near- Projects Wide-field Array (MWA). Centred on est school and so are enrolled in a School Boolardy station, a pastoral station 200 kilo- of the Air where their lessons are largely In addition to school and community vis- metres west-south-west of the small town delivered to them interactively over the in- its, other significant outreach projects of Meekatharra, the MRO covers a circular ternet. Secondary-age children from pas- have been carried out in the region over area 70 kilometres in diameter. toral stations normally attend high schools the past few years. In 2006–2007 CSIRO’s in Perth or in regional towns as boarders. Wildflowers In the Sky involved numerous The Mid West region stretches from the school visits by professional astronomy ed- west coast inland to the Gibson Desert. ucators and astronomers, providing tele- Covering an area of 472 336 square kilo School and community visits scopes and training for local teachers. metres, the region has a population2 of Thanks to this initiative, many of the com- 51 748 or 0.1 people/sq km, more than 65% Over the last few years numerous outreach munity schools in the shire of Murchison of whom live in the town of Geraldton on field trips have been undertaken in the re- own simple Dobsonian telescopes. A com- the coast. The remainder live in small com- gion by staff from both the International ponent of this project involved public view- munities scattered throughout the region, Centre for Radio Astronomy Research ing nights in each of the towns and com- or on homesteads in pastoral areas acces- (ICRAR) and the Commonwealth Scientific munities. Follow-up visits since the project sible only by unsealed dirt roads. The shire and Industrial Research Organisation ended have sustained interest and aware- of Murchison itself, within which the MRO (CSIRO). Due to the distances and logis- ness. is located, is the only shire in Australia with- tics involved in such excursions, many of out a gazetted town. The shire is approx- them are planned so that several locations One highly successful project was Ilgarijiri, imately 50 000 square kilometres in size can be visited in a single trip. Recent vis- a collaboration between local indige-

Astronomy Outreach in the Remote Mid West Region of Western Australia 17 Astronomy Outreach in the Remote Mid West Region of Western Australia

nous artists from the Mid West region and a very high turnover of teachers in many kids are always curious and full of ques- astronomers from the ICRAR in Perth, car- schools and a high proportion of newly tions. School ovals provide great locations ried out as part of the International Year of qualified teachers, very few of whom have for viewing nights (although power is usu- Astronomy 2009. Following a tour of the any science specialisation. One result of ally not available) and due to the lack of MRO and a cultural exchange around a this is that knowledge can leave the com- light pollution the skies are stunning. campfire at Boolardy station, the artists munity very quickly, and training in the use created more than eighty pieces of unique of telescopes usually has to be carried out Due to outreach initiatives such as Aboriginal art for an exhibition that toured on each visit. Wildflowers In the Sky, several of the re- Australia during 2009. The title of the exhibi- mote communities now have their own op- tion, Ilgarijiri is a word in the local Wadjarri- There is a high proportion of indigenous tical telescope, although sometimes op- Yamatji language meaning “things belong- students in the region, and most of the pu- erational knowledge is lacking due to the ing to the sky”. pils in remote schools are Aboriginal. While high turnover of staff. many of them have a good level of abil- In 2010 a project was carried out with the ity in English, they can have different atti- Outreach in Western Australia’s Mid West Carnarvon School of the Air under the tudes and knowledge levels to “city” kids. region in particular is important both for Universe Awareness (UNAWE) banner as Especially in the smaller remote commu- creating a general awareness of SKA and part of the International SKA Forum held in nities, activities must often be aimed at a developments under way at the MRO, and the Netherlands. The aim was to link up a mixed group containing children at several for getting local children interested and primary school in each of the SKA candi- different stages of education. aware of the possibilities and jobs that date areas with a school in the Netherlands these developments will bring. and give the students the chance to talk Visits to the region usually include viewing to each other and learn about other coun- nights for both schools and the wider com- Flexibility is vital when conducting out- tries and cultures, as well as finding out munity. The best telescopes for trips to the reach in areas such as this. It is always about the radio telescopes being built in area are Dobsonians due to their simplic- helpful to have a backup plan, and some their respective countries. The link took ity; power cannot always be guaranteed at extra resources and activities, just in case! place via the internet in May 2010 and was remote locations and the set-up time be- filmed for a short video which was distrib- fore an event is often very short, so simple uted to participants at the SKA Forum in telescopes are a must. Acknowledgements June. The project also resulted in the distribution of Earth balls and teaching ma- However, not all visits result in success- The outreach efforts described here would terials to a large number of schools in all ful night-time viewing events. Sometimes not be possible without the organisational three countries. the weather fails to cooperate and in such support of both CSIRO and ICRAR, and the cases it is often possible to do an informal time and effort of the numerous staff and Ask an Astronomer session instead or (if students who volunteer their time to partic- Challenges facilities are available) a demonstration of ipate in field trips. a planetarium program such as Stellarium, Due to the wide geographical spread of and some additional astronomy in the schools and the nature of outback travel, classroom the following day. Daytime ac- Notes tours in the region require both careful tivities include using planetarium software, planning and flexibility. Off-road vehicles model Solar Systems, solar viewing, and 1 www.skatelescope.org are required to reach many of the commu- launching water rockets. 2 As of 2006; source, Mid West Development nities, even in good conditions, and a sat- Commission statistics ellite phone is necessary for emergency communication due to lack of mobile cov- Conclusions erage (one factor which makes the area such a radio-quiet zone, ideal for placing Recent outreach in the Mid West has in- a sensitive radio telescope!). Supplies of cluded successful visits to several remote Biographies food and water need to be carried in case schools and communities with whom good of emergency; in the event of a breakdown links have been established. These efforts Megan Argo is a radio astronomer with a pas- it can be many hours before help arrives. have resulted in an increased local aware- sion for outreach, currently based at the Astron, In summer, temperatures routinely reach ness of SKA, the reasons why the Mid West the Netherlands. From 2009 to 2011 she was more than 40 degrees Celsius, and in the is an ideal location for radio telescopes, a postdoctoral fellow and outreach coordina- wet season the roads can flood, making and the local impact these projects will tor at the Curtin University node of the Interna- them impassable and cutting off commu- have on the region. tional Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Western Australia. nities for weeks at a time. For all the difficulties associated with out- Robert Hollow is Education and Outreach All schools in the region are generally well- reach in remote areas, the extra effort is Officer at the Astronomy and Space Science resourced and all have internet access via worth it. The local communities are always division of CSIRO in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. satellite, but there are various issues. Due interested and usually turn out in large to the often very remote locations, there is numbers to attend viewing nights, and the

18 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 Medieval Stars in Melk Abbey Reviews

Paul G. Beck Georg Zotti Keywords Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, Katholieke Interdisziplinäre Forschungsplattform International Year of Astronomy 2009, Lecture Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Archäologie Series, Exhibition, Medieval Astronomy Institut für Astronomie der Universität Wien, Universität Wien, Austria Austria E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

Summary

Melk Abbey, a marvel of European high baroque architecture, is one of the most frequently visited tourist attractions in Aus- tria, attracting 450 000 visitors each year. The monastery’s museum presents selected aspects of Benedictine life in Melk since the monastery’s foundation in 1089. After the church, the library is the second-most important room in a Benedic- tine monastery. Due to the wide scientific interests and contacts of the medieval monks, these libraries also contain manuscripts on mathematics, physics and astronomy. In 2009, the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), the annual library exhibition was fully dedicated to astronomical manuscripts and early prints from the past 1000 years. Following earlier research work on astronomical manuscripts in Melk’s library, we were invited to organise the exhibition. In addition, we also presented a lecture series and provided more background in an accompanying book. Because of positive feedback from the visitors, the exhibition was extended until March 2011. In the two years of its duration, the exhibition was seen by more than 900 000 visitors. In this article, we describe the background to the scientific project, how the exhibition was organised and lessons learned from this project.

Elements of a unique exhibition project

Historical context of the project One might think of monastic libraries as book collections that only contain theolog- ical paperwork. However, after the Council of Nicaea (325) decided on the criteria for the Easter date, astronomy became an important tool in the Middle Ages for comput- ing Easter Sunday and the corresponding feast days. Therefore, some of the oldest books in monastic book collections contain manuals on the so-called computus ecclesiasticus (Figure 1). Figure 1. The first display of the exhibition contained about 3500 years of accumulated history: The books in the lower row are about 550 years old, while the two large-format books were written in the 11th and early 9th centu- In the early 15th century, an inner-monas- ries. Except for the book in the centre, all deal with variations of the Computus Ecclesiasticus, the calculation of the date of Easter Sunday. Credit: G. Zotti. tic reform movement, known as the Melk Reform (Bruck-Niederkorn, 1994), was initiated by the Council of Constance (1414– These seven subjects, including astron- the abbey’s school. Consequently, the ab- 1418) and spread from this abbey to over 40 omy and mathematics, were considered to bey’s school, first mentioned in 1140 (and Benedictine monasteries throughout cen- be the general education of a free man, still in existence today), reached its first ac- tral Europe. Besides the restoration of mo- hence the Latin word liber for liberal or free. ademic peak in the 15th century. In the re- nastic values and the economic system, the The general level of education in the conform’s new philosophy, the influence of the education of the monks was also a main vent was improved, and gifted novices were academic tradition of Nikolaus Seyringer concern of the reformers. The reform there- sent to study at the University of Vienna. (~1360–1425), who was the reforming ab- fore initiated an extension of the spectrum On the other hand, young Magistri who had bot of Melk and the former rector of the of scientific interest in education and mon- finished their studies of the liberal arts in University of Vienna, is clearly visible. This astery libraries towards the artes liberales. Vienna were contracted to Melk to teach at epoch overlaps with the early phase of the

CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 19 FooterMedieval Main Stars Title in Melk Abbey

University of Vienna (founded in 1365), when astronomers such as Johannes von Gmunden (ca. 1380/84–1442), Georg von Peuerbach (1423–1461) and Johann Müller, better known as Regiomontanus (1436–1476), worked. An intensive academic and scientific collaboration between Vienna University and Melk Abbey was established on multiple levels. As a result of these developments, the monks of Melk Abbey collected, among other things, several hundreds of pages of astronomical manuscripts by copying, exchanging dupli- Figure 2. Melk Abbey viewed in the evening sun from a hot-air balloon. Below, the historic city centre of the town cates with other monastic libraries or by of Melk can be seen. Melk is the starting point of the Danube landscape known as the Wachau. purchasing. As we will show later, several Credit: M. Rotheneder OSB. rare manuscripts were thus preserved from loss throughout the centuries. lecture evening was dedicated to astro- pair of globes, one of the Earth and the nomical observations in collaboration with other celestial, manufactured by Vincenzo Modular project concept the Lower Austrian Amateur Astronomers, Coronelli in the late 17th century, and sec- From the very beginning of our work in the which had to be cancelled due to bad ondly, meteorites, which were donated by library of Melk, our main concern was not weather. However, it is worth noting that the Habsburg family to the Melk Abbey to stack dates and facts onto each other. for this evening the complete outdoor illu- school. We saw the exhibition items as witnesses to mination of Melk abbey (usually a brightly- an evolution of scientific focus and knowl- lit tourist landmark) was switched off to ex- A showcase was dedicated to pre-tele- edge, thus using them to illustrate this in- pose the dark skies over Melk. scopic instrument reconstructions and a crease in knowledge. Therefore, we con- 19th-century telescope from the monas- ceived the IYA2009 project as time travel Also workshops with students in the high tery’s school reminded visitors of the 400th through more than 1000 years of history achievers programme were held and will anniversary of Galileo’s discoveries. and developments in astronomy, told by now continue on a yearly basis. documents and items from the library, in- In the second module of the exhibition, cluding the instrument and mineral collec- C. Publication of exhibition proceedings we presented two international research tions of the Abbey. We offered several ways Edited by the librarian, Father Professor projects that include Austrian partici- of exploring the rich historic documents on Dr Gottfried Glaßner OSB, the first volume pation. Austria’s new ESO membership astronomy at Melk. of the new publication series Thesaurus was brought to the attention of visitors Mellicensis was dedicated to the scientific by hosting ESO’s photo-panel exhibition. A. Exhibition: Historic Astronomy and results discovered by the members of the Furthermore, Austria’s first satellite project, Austrian Astronomy in 2009 project team. The contributions have been BRITE–Constellation (Weiss, 2008) was The exhibition was divided into two sec- reviewed by members of the medieval represented by a true-scale model. tions, which formed a continuous time- book commission of the Austrian Academy line from the earliest astronomical man- of Sciences. uscripts, dating from as early as the 9th Concept implementation and century, focusing on the work of astrono- lessons learned mers at the young University of Vienna and Selected highlights of the exhibition observations obtained in Melk Abbey over The oldest item of this exhibition was writ- Early experiences in the design phase the centuries into the age of modern as- ten before the year 825 and contains a First discussed in late 2007, the basic con- tronomy. The end of the journey showed copy of De Temporibus, the standard book cept for this project grew in our minds for the contemporary international astronom- on the calculation of the Easter date by the about a year and condensed towards a ical research in 2009 in which Austria is Venerable Bede (Codex 412)1. It is one of consistent proposal in 2008. For the title involved, such as that carried out at the the oldest books in an Austrian book col- of this project we have chosen the German European Southern Observatory (ESO). lection. (Figure 1, top right). translation of Psalm 192, “The heavens declare the glory of God...”, which was quoted B. Lecture series: Astronomical A central point of the exhibition was based in a sophisticated Latin manuscript on the Colloquium 2009 on notes, manuscripts and incunabula of construction and usage of astrolabes For advanced visitors, talks on historical the early phase of the University of Vienna, (Cod. 511). At the first work meeting with and modern astronomy were given. The when an intensive collaboration between the cultural administration of Melk Abbey topics were related to those addressed in the two institutions was established (see in December 2008, we soon learned to un- the exhibition, but which could not be fol- section 3). As a place of spiritual and polit- derstand the basic concept of the abbey’s lowed through there to the fullest extent. ical influence, Melk also had contact with museum: Everything has to fit into the ar- Before every lecture, we gave a special the imperial family of the Habsburgs. Two chitectural atmosphere of the rooms. This guided tour through the exhibition. One groups of items were displayed, firstly, a is especially important for projects in the

20 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012

library, as its main room is itself a signif- ing all catalogue entries which could con- To be able to show selected pages of the icant piece of art, including the uniform tain astronomical content for interesting books, we had to prepare the books in a leather-bound book covers, which match items. Our search was based on authors certain way so as to avoid further dam- the wooden baroque bookshelves. The al- and titles of the books and also on cata- age. The pages were fixed with strips of legorical figures in the area of the archi- logues of incipient words, i.e the first few the same foil that was used to cover the tectural painting surrounding the ceiling words of the opening line of a text. Cross- glass of the showcases and acid-free pa- fresco are dedicated to the research top- references in the scientific literature were per. Due to the old wooden and leather ics covered by the books in the library in- also used. However, we did not restrict our- bindings, the books had to be supported cluding astronomy. selves to modern, electronically available with little wooden book stands. If several, catalogues, but we also investigated older non-adjacent pages contained details that To accommodate this we had to revise the compilations of book catalogues, which we wanted to show, we included a pho- arrangements of the external items slightly, gave valuable information on the historic tographic reproduction on the relevant ex- but the science was untouched. Once the book inventory. We will discuss the find- planatory card. ESO exhibition was moved to the next ings in the next section. event location in Innsbruck, this philos- Although working with white gloves when ophy even allowed us to place the shiny During our work, we were supported by handling the pages inside the books, when gold BRITE satellite model in the baroque the abbey’s librarian, Father Glaßner, OSB, working on the final placement blackened library’s main hall, as it fits with its colour and his assistants, Mag. Christine Preiner fingers and hands were unavoidable while concept perfectly. and Mag. Bernadette Kalteis. Additionally carrying books around or aligning them. involved in the investigations and pub- Being in such an environment, browsing Preparing the displays lication on specific topics were Mag. through thousands of pages of ancient The museum and the church of Melk Abbey Nora Pärr (Univ. Vienna), Dr Vittoria Feola knowledge and having the plot of Umberto are open for visitors throughout the year. (Univ. London), Giles Davison (London), Eco’s (1986) bestselling book, The Name The main season starts traditionally with Karl Heinz Keller (Bavarian State Library) of the Rose, in mind, we could not resist the Easter week, which was in early April and others. Dr Christine Glaßner from referring to certain passages of the story in 2009. Aside from a few details, the show- the Commission of Palaeography and when we saw our black fingers. However, cases and the explanation cards for each Codicology of Medieval Manuscripts of we survived. item were finished in mid-March so as to be the Austrian Academy of Sciences also able to present the exhibition at the cele- contributed her expertise. As each of the Other items were placed between the bration for the proclamation of the Wachau team members has a different core com- books. Meteorites from the abbey’s min- region and Melk Abbey as the Best Historic petence, many fruitful discussions were eral collection (founded in 1767) and sev- Site by the National Geographic Traveler held, where scientists from one discipline eral historic instruments from the physics magazine. had to explain their approach using non- department of the abbey’s school were expert words. In the preface of the accom- displayed between the books. The exhi- From our work in the library, we knew of panying book, Thesaurus Mellicensis Vol.1, bition also included the excellent pair of several important books in the collection, Father Gottfried Glaßner addressed this by Coronelli globes, a celestial and an Earth which formed a firm basis for the exhibi- stating that the key to the success of this globe, which form a permanent part of the tion. Around Christmas 2008, we spent project was the willingness of everybody to library exhibition, as well as several details several days in the library halls screen- listen and join in the discussion. of the fresco, showing astronomical allego- ries or instruments. Once the museum was closed to the public in the evening, we tested potential con- Optimising a scientific exhibition for a figurations of the presentation by placing high throughput of international tourists the books on top of the showcases and The main goal of this exhibition was then documented the options photographically. put into an overall context: the evolution We used these sketches at our meetings of research interests in astronomy. During in Vienna to visualise the current layout our work on the showcases, we devel- and discuss further improvements. Finally, oped a first impression of how much time in February, we placed the books in the an average guided tour takes for the library showcases according to our final con- module. At peak times, the tour guide has cept. Special care had to be taken for con- about five to ten minutes to explain the rich servation reasons. Again, the librarians library and its long history to the group be- guided us with their expertise. To protect fore the next tour approaches the displays. the displayed pages from ultraviolet light, Although in certain cases little radio head- the glass was covered with an ultraviolet- sets are handed to the tour participants, reflecting foil. Also the windows were per- which give a bit of extra time because they Figure 3. The exhibition authors Paul Beck and Georg manently covered with curtains to reduce avoid confusion between different guided Zotti with the true-scale model of the BRITE satellite the incoming light, and flash photography groups, we still had to condense the con- in front of Melk Abbey’s church. The model “hovered” of the manuscripts was forbidden. cept of the exhibition to a few basic lines. in Melk above visitors’ heads until the end of the exhibition. Credit: G. Zotti.

FooterMedieval Main Stars Title in Melk Abbey 21 Medieval Stars in Melk Abbey

Each tour is different and every tour guide 1605, fol. 162rv). The early Habsburgs as- recorded exact stellar altitude data to de- has his own style and area of expertise. signed Peuerbach to present an expert rive the local timestamps of the contacts. Therefore, we were requested by Melk view of the great comet of 1456, which is According to Regiomontanus’s journal of Abbey authorities to prepare educational nowadays better known as 1P/Halley. While observations, which is quoted by Bose, the material, which was handed to the guides the original manuscript is lost, this excerpt astronomers observed in Melk. We there- in advance of a special training session in has survived for more than 550 years in the fore were initially surprised that there was the library. In this written summary, we drew library of Melk. This shows the importance no note concerning the stay of both astron- attention to and gave detailed information of monastic libraries for preserving scien- omers in Melk, although about 25 years on a few selected books, which we thought tific treasures over centuries. later one of them is highly glorified in the of as cornerstones of astronomical history library catalogue. However, we found in- (see the next section), and also provided in- Although Peuerbach was paid as a court dications that King Ladislaus [Postumus] formation on each item. Over the two years, astrologer, he minimised the astrological (1440–1457), whom Peuerbach served as the authors also did some “sneak touring” interpretation of the comet. In fact, this royal astrologer, stayed for some time as for quality control by listening anonymously work represents one of the first empirical a guest in Melk Abbey in September on to tours passing through the library. A more approaches to the phenomenon of a comet the way to his planned wedding in Prague, extensive guided tour was given by the au- and is structured in a similar way to a mod- where he instead found an untimely death. thors on every lecture night. ern publication. To give readers the oppor- Also, the measured timestamps perfectly fit tunity to discover the text of this important with an observation made in Melk, and the In the peak season (April to October), tour- document on their own, the Latin transcript fit is definitely much better than for Vienna ists are not obliged to follow a guided tour, (Ferarri, 1961) and a translation were pub- as an observation location. but can visit the museum independently. lished in the exhibition book (Beck & Zotti, So, to convey the essence of this exhibi- 2009a). A more extensive, critical discus- Among many other documents, we also tion to international and individual tourists, sion on astrology by Georg von Peuerbach want to highlight Fragment 229, which an exhibition sign welcomed them with the was found in a unique manuscript which is was also published as the APOD for exhibition prologue not only in German, but described in the same book in more detail 17 April 2009 (Beck & Zotti, 2009b). The also in English, French and Italian. by Glaßner & Keller (2009). (assumed) author (cf. Bruckmüller, 1989), Magister Wolfgang de Styria (1402–1491 As mentioned earlier, we also investigated or 1498), was a student of the liberal arts Connections to the First Viennese older book catalogues, which gave valua- at the University of Vienna before 1423, School of Astronomy and Melk Abbey ble information on the historic book inven- at a time when Johannes von Gmunden during the 15th century tory. The most impressive direct evidence was dean of this faculty and also gave lec- As the first peak of astronomical research in that the keepers of the library did not sim- tures. After Wolfgang had completed his Vienna coincided with a phase of strong in- ply collect material blindly, but also eval- studies in Vienna, he was contracted to terest in astronomy in Melk, we found many uated its quality was found in the oldest teach at the abbey school. A year after he documents on interactions. A very interest- library catalogues written in 1483 (Cod. arrived in Melk, he also joined the mon- ing document for astronomical research is 874, fol. 50v) and in an edited copy that astery. However, the latest research sug- one of the only four existing copies of the was written around 1495 (Cod. 1075, fol. gests that this fragment was already writ- Latin Iudicium super Comete 1456 (Cod. 31r). In the register of authors, we found not ten in the 14th century2, which would show only the name of the astronomer Johannes another fascinating example of the tradi- de Monte Regio (Regiomontanus), but also tion of astronomical knowledge. This frag- a statement underlining the respect that the ment was probably written for teaching monks of Melk had for him and his place basic astronomy in the abbey’s school. It in his science: “rightfully the king of the explains the Ptolemaic, geocentric system Viennese astronomers”. and how in this geometry a lunar and solar eclipse can be explained. Finally, the circu- Another interesting note on the interaction lar table in the lower right of the page gives between the astronomers of the University an algorithm to calculate the date of the of Vienna and Melk Abbey was found in Easter full Moon (cf. Beck & Zotti, 2009a). a baroque book of colloquium abstracts. In this publication, Georg Matthias Bose, a mathematician and astronomer at the Press work and media feedback University of Wittenberg, invited readers to In 2009, the project was advertised celebrate the 300th anniversary of the ob- nation-wide by Melk Abbey and excur- servation of the lunar eclipse of September sion web pages as a special project for 1457 by Peuerbach and his young student, the International Year of Astronomy 2009. now known as Regiomontanus (Bose, Klösterreich, an Austrian collaboration of Figure 4. Impression from one of the numerous 1757). From Bose’s point of view, this ob- monasteries with a combined marketing guided tours through the library exhibition: A tour servation marks the restoration of astron- concept, proclaimed 2009 as the year of guide explains the concept of the exhibition to an omy, as it appears to be the first one af- monastic libraries and also advertised this international group of tourists. Credit: P. Beck. ter antiquity where European astronomers exhibition as one of their highlights.

22 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

For the domestic press release, several year. This was very helpful from an organ- Bruckmüller, E. (ed.) 1989, 900 Jahre photos of the displayed items were pro- isational and marketing perspective, as Benediktiner in Melk, (Stift Melk: Melk), 289 vided. The picture that was chosen most we only had to provide the text for the fly- (Bruck-Niederkorn), AC00034347 often by the media is shown in Figure 3. ers and a press release, while the layout, Bruck-Niederkorn, M. 1994, Die Melker The original intention for this picture was production and distribution in the printed Reform im Spiegel der Visitationen, that this façade is generally recognised by and electronic formats were done by the (Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag: Austrians as part of Melk Abbey, and we Cultural Office. Also, the press release re- München), 978-3486648300 assumed that Austria’s first satellite would ceived a wider response as it was sent out Ferrari d’Occhieppo, K. 1961, Weitere catch people’s attention. Obviously, we via Melk Abbey’s network. Only the explan- Dokumente zu Peuerbachs Gutachten über were right. The catchiest headline found atory cards in the displays were laid out by den Kometen von 1456, Sitzungsberichte with this picture was “Scotty, beam me into us. By following this strategy of work distri- der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mathem.-naturw. Klasse, Melk Abbey”. bution we could optimise the workflow and Abt. II, Vol. 169, 163f. outcome. To draw international attention, a photo- Glaßner, C. & Keller, K. H. 2009, Astronomie des 15. Jahrhunderts aus Wien in der Yale graph of Fragment 229 was submitted The feedback we received from visitors Medical Library, Thesaurus Mellicensis Vol. to APOD and this was published on the and audiences following the guided tours 1, 35, ed. G. Glaßner OSB, (Stift Melk: Melk), opening day of the exhibition. The main- and the lecture nights was very positive. ISBN 978-3-9502328-1-3 stream coverage of the project concen- In general, people were impressed by the Weiss, W. W. 2008, BRITE-Constellation: trated around the opening of the exhibition astronomical work contained in monastic Astrophysical Concept, Communications in in spring 2009. More sophisticated reports libraries. Also, the open way in which we Asteroseismology, 152, 6 followed during the year. Also, the project presented the history of astronomy was ap- was reviewed in annual reports such as the preciated. Austrian commission for UNESCO (2009 Annual report, p. 29): Notes Acknowledgements “Throughout the year, numerous activities 1 Codex numbers refer to the inventory of the took place in all of Austria, which are de- This project was kindly supported by the library of Melk Abbey. scribed in more detail under www.astron- Office for Cultural Events of Melk Abbey, 2 Priv. Com. Dr. Christine Glaßner, Austrian omie2009.at. Special highlights were an the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Academy of Sciences, Commission of exhibition ‘The heavens declare the glory the BRITE consortium, the Austrian Space Paleography and Codicology of Medieval of God’ at Melk Abbey, and ‘Travelling to Forum, members of the Department for Manuscripts. the stars’ at Rein Abbey near Graz, both of Astronomy at the University of Vienna and 3 Note that for the exhibition in Melk this num- which centred around historically valuable the Lower Austrian Amateur Astronomers. ber is too small by a factor of two. books from six3 centuries of astronomy.” We express our gratitude to Father Martin Rotheneder OSB, Father Professor Dr Gottfried Glaßner OSB, Father Severin Conclusions Novak OSB, Father Petrus Lehninger OSB, Maria Prüller, Mag. Christine Preiner, Having the chance to work on such a large Mag. Bernadette Kalteis and Dr Gerhard collection of astronomical manuscripts and Floßmann for their fruitful cooperation in Biography prints was a very interesting experience. Melk Abbey. During the last 50 years, several individual Paul Beck, graduated as a master in astron- manuscripts, such as the Iudicium, have omy from the University of Vienna, Austria. been analysed in detail or from the view- Bibliography Now working as a PhD student at the Katho- point of the University of Vienna and its fa- liek Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, on the aster- mous astronomers. In the course of this Beck, P. & Zotti, G. 2009a, Melker Meilensteine oseismology of red giant stars with photome- project, however, we have analysed the sci- auf dem Weg in ein naturwissenschaftliches try from the Kepler satellite, funded through an Zeitalter, Thesaurus Mellicensis Vol.1, 9, ed. Advanced Grant from the European Research entific interest and usage of astronomy in Council under the European Community’s G. Glaßner OSB, (Stift Melk: Melk), ISBN a monastic, medieval environment. In ad- Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007– 978-3-9502328-1-3 dition to the central role of the Computus, 2013)/ERC grant agreement n°227224 we were able to show that the Benedictines Beck, P. & Zotti, G. 2009b, NASA Astronomical (PROSPERITY). did not defend old views, but were inter- Picture of the day (2009, April 17) http:// apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090417.html Georg Zotti graduated in computer science ested in ongoing astronomical research from Vienna Technical University, and astron- and were able to discuss the arguments Bose, G. M. 1757, Eclipseos lunaris omy undergraduate from the University of for all proposed theories. MCCCCLVII d. III. Sept. quo coelesti indul- Vienna/Austria. Now working as post-doc on gentia Natalis Uraniae tercentesimus felici the archaeo-astronomy of Neolithic circular affulget sidere secularia die IX.Septembris ditch systems at the Vienna Institute for Archae- The project definitely benefited from the H.LQ.C celebranda indicit simul..., ological Science (VIAS), University of Vienna. fact that we could utilise the complete in- Wittenberg (Supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, frastructure of a location used to working project no. P 21208-G19 “ASTROSIM”). with hundreds of thousands of tourists per

Medieval Stars in Melk Abbey 23 Astronomy Week in Madeira, Portugal Best Practices Best

P. Augusto J. L. Sobrinho Keywords Universidade da Madeira and Centro de Universidade da Madeira and Centro de Public Outreach, Informal Education, Astronomia e Astrofísica da Universidade Astronomia e Astrofísica da Universidade de Exhibitions, Non-traditional Events de Lisboa, Portugal Lisboa, Portugal [email protected] [email protected]

Summary

The outreach programme Semanas da Astronomia (Astronomy Weeks) is held in late spring or summer on the island of Madeira, Portugal. This programme has been attracting enough interest to be mentioned in the regional press/TV/radio every year and is now, without doubt, the astronomical highlight of the year on Madeira. We believe that this programme is a good case study for showing how to attract the general public to astronomy in a small (population 250 000, area 900 km2) and fairly isolated place such as Madeira. Our Astronomy Weeks have been different each year and have so far included exhibitions, courses, talks, a forum, documentaries, observing sessions (some with blackouts), music and an astro party. These efforts may contribute towards putting Madeira on the map with respect to observational astronomy, and have also contributed to the planned installation of two observatories in the island.

The relevance of the Astronomy the trails known as the Levada Walks, so Weeks for Madeira that tourism is, by far, the main industry on Madeira. As a natural consequence, The Semanas da Astronomia began in many (nature) themed Festas (festivals) 2001. The success of the programme has now take place throughout the year. For varied over the years. However the Weeks example, the Festa da Anona (Festival of have attracted enough interest to be men- the Cherimoya – a type of pawpaw), Festa tioned in the regional press/TV/radio every da Vinha e do Vinho (Wine Festival), Festa year. This could be a crucial element in im- da Castanha (Chestnut Festival), Festa proving how the public and regional au- da Flor (Flower Festival), Festa da Cereja thorities perceive the relevance of astron- (Cherry Festival). In most cases the Festas omy to attract general support for two last a whole week, albeit with an empha- observatories (optical and radio) that we sis on weekends. So, why not a Festa of plan to install on Madeira (e.g., Augusto, astronomy? 2011). In 2000 the Astronomy Group of the Universidade da Madeira1 took formal The Inception shape as we were already setting up the first ever national astronomical meeting The island of Madeira is famous for its as- in Madeira: the XI Portuguese National tounding natural beauty, and notably for Meeting of Astronomy and Astrophysics2 the World Heritage Laurissilva Forest. More (Figure 1). Since the scientific programme than a million tourists visit each year, to en- Figure 1. The poster of the XI Encontro Nacional de was to last only two days (there are not so joy the spectacular scenery that the island Astronomia e Astrofísica showing part of the south many astronomers in Portugal; although has to offer, and especially that found on coast of Madeira. the vast majority of them did come to this

24 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

year. However, the second attempt in 2002 since, when lectures finish on Madeira, stu- would be riskier. Not only because a repeat dents and teachers tend to “disappear” for of the initial success couldn’t be guaran- the summer. We have also tried events at teed, but also because we would be lack- different times of day, to attract more working our greatest attraction: a meeting of ing people (out of office hours) and univer- national relevance. So we would have to sity students: events early in the day were fill up the last two days of the week with not getting much attention, nor were we events. We had the idea of doing an all- successfully attracting the students (and night star party, hoping to make it the cli- unfortunately, this has only changed for the max and finale of the week (as it still is to- worse in recent years). day, taking place on the night of Friday into Saturday). That was our first AstroFesta Over the years from 2003 to 2008, the (AstroParty) and this event was also our AstroParty continued to be the most pop- best chance of keeping the attention of ular event. We have summarised the the press for the second year running too4 Astronomy Weeks III to VIII in Table 1. We — 15–20 July 2002. It worked fine. Since maintained the number of courses of- the AstroParty was now the main event, fered and had roughly the same number we made sure that the public would not be of speakers, but public interest in these disappointed: we set it up in the hills at a events diminished from year to year. We very dark site at an altitude of 1600 metres, kept, for the first four years, the observation but accessible by road (although a spe- model of the previous years (sunspots + Figure 2. The poster of the IX Semana da Astronomia, cial permit was required from the Regional AstroParty). A turning point came in 2006, held during the IYA2009 as an official event in that Forests Department). It was no accident when hardly anyone attended either the programme. that this was very close to the only site in AstroParty or the courses (despite choos- Madeira with published results on its splen- ing very focused themes like: “News from meeting), a Thursday and a Friday, we de- did observational quality (McInnes, 1981). Saturn (Cassini)” or “The discovery of the cided to convert the whole week into a However, that was not enough for us. We first young radio galaxy in a super-galaxy”) Festa da Astronomia (23–27 July 20013) also made sure that no moonlight would and so we decided that we should get back during which time the closed meeting disturb our observations of deep-sky ob- to the city (the terrace of the University) to would take place, with most public activ- jects; after all, we were taking our 30-cen- attract the public back again; and can- ities taking place between Monday and timetre automatic telescope up on the celled all the courses. In 2007 and 2008 Wednesday. We held three observing ses- mountain, as well as a generator! We kept we went back to night-time observations sions. One in the day, for sunspots — the the day-time session to observe sunspots, with great success (twice during the Week, Sun was particularly active that year — and but the night-time sessions were now rein addition to the day-time observation ses- two at night, with telescopes and equip- placed by the AstroParty. We reduced the sion and the AstroParty). Since then the ment set up on the terrace of the University number of astronomy courses offered from AstroParty (the landmark of the Astronomy building, and a wide selection of nine small nine to five (five speakers, one of whom Week) has remained popular. In 2007 and astronomy courses (each 1.5 hours long), was new) with a resulting drop in public in- 2008 we offered a single, longer (six-hour) given by five different coordinators, cover- terest. course, for free, on basic astronomy. This ing all the main basic astronomical topics, course was mainly targeted towards teach- and with catchy titles: “The Sun, our star”, Finally, the presence of a visiting astron- ers, and was successful in 2007, but less “The amazing planets”, “The fascinating omer (Ivan Andronov, Odessa National so in 2008. We also radically changed the stars”, “The Milky Way, our galaxy”, “The University, Ukraine), on a three-month look of the poster in 2007; and we cele- majestic normal galaxies”, “Black holes”, professorship at Madeira, motivated us to brated the inauguration of the Laboratory “Fantastic active galaxies”, “The origin of change the initial emphasis of the Week: for Astronomical Instrumentation (the high- the Universe”, “The big mysteries of as- the opening address was now given by the light that year). In 2008 we held an exhibi- tronomy”. The open part of the week con- Rector, followed by a public talk (mid-week) tion and officially presented the first concluded with a public talk entitled, “Is there given by our guest (on cataclysmic stars). firmed 100+ events for the International alien life?”, which proved particularly at- Our hope was to have a repeat event with Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) on Madeira tractive (an almost full auditorium). Finally, an international speaker every year but, un- (in the end we passed the 200-event we started a tradition that lasted several fortunately, this has not been possible. mark6). years, with the characteristic look of our Astronomy Week posters. In 2005, the International Year of Physics, An established event we devoted a week-long exhibition7 to Einstein and his many contributions to The natural consequence Each year we have experimented with new astrophysics. That was another turning events, to keep the interest of the public point for our Astronomy Week, and we held Having had success with our first attempt (and the press). We tried changing the date exhibitions every year until 2009 (although at an Astronomy Week, the natural reac- to early June, so that schools were still in we hope to resume these in 2011: see tion was to try to repeat it in the following session (for both students and teachers) more below). The start of the exhibitions

Astronomy Week in Madeira, Portugal 25 Astronomy Week in Madeira, Portugal

out of the eleven activities of the Week took closed (and now still exists only through place in Porto Moniz, in the northern part the work of volunteers like us) and there of the island. Only the AstroFesta, the ex- was a lack of interest from the University of hibition (in their usual places) and the first Madeira in keeping up the “traditional” ex- novelty (a talk/performance on “Music by hibition, and the Astronomy Week. We were Galileo” at the music school in Funchal) did forced to postpone the Week from May to not take place in Porto Moniz. The second November (22–26 November), when we new event was a series of three astronom- were able to include the closing ceremony ical documentaries that were shown with of the IYA2009 on Madeira — the highlight). an expert commentary, one in English (for tourists). The third new event was part of Even in this difficult year we still managed the Dark Skies Awareness Cornerstone to include some new features, like a local- project of the IYA20099 and began with a ised blackout around the University (includ- Figure 3. A group of 4–7 year olds waiting for the Sun talk on the subject10, followed the next day ing a section of a nearby major highway!) to come out from behind the clouds, at Porto Moniz, by a night-time observing session with an during a night-time session. The weather during the IX Semana da Astronomia. intentional blackout, to show people how did not help either — rain and clouds. The much we lose of the night sky though bad same happened on another day when we was combined with the official opening of artificial lighting. In addition, we ran the conducted a day-time observing session. Astronomy Week at the University, with an usual day-time and night-time sessions And, for the first time, we did not even leave address by the Rector or another official and a talk on astronomy, this time for 4–7 Funchal for the AstroFesta, since there was representative. year olds (Figure 3). Finally, our exhibition an orange alert of wind and rain for the was also different. Since, by this time, we mountain site. With the Week taking place had had roughly 900 school students who in Funchal again, we had a talk on black The International Year of had passed through the Laboratory doing holes, a commented astronomical docu- Astronomy 2009 Hands-On Universe experiments, we could mentary, and a full National Science Day not resist showing off their best construc- on the 24th, with the closing Ceremony The year 2009 was the one to make it big. tions — the theme for that year’s exhibi- of the IYA2009, where prizes were given And we tried all we could. We designed tion (Figure 4). to many collaborators from all parts of a brand new poster (following the general Madeiran society after a short summary template of all the posters for the initiatives8 talk, and a two-hour long forum on “The that we conducted for the IYA2009), see The bad year of 2010 Universe” (from all perspectives). This fo- Figure 2. The Week took place from 15– rum was a new event and it worked really 20 June. After so many versions of the programme, well, with scientists and laypeople together one year was bound go less well. And that presenting their views. Since we had plenty of astronomy going happened in the tenth year, when we were on elsewhere for the public and schools on planning a flashback exhibition of the pre- Madeira in 2009, we had to select a spe- vious nine years of Astronomy Weeks. But Summary: Highlights cial programme for the Astronomy Week. the University of Madeira had other plans. We started by changing the place: eight In 2010 the Astronomy Group was formally As usual when dealing with the press or the public, we must have a strong programme to continue to catch their interest Moon phase in the Astronomy Week every year. Hence, Week Year Dates during the Courses Speakers we have tried, almost every year since the AstroParty first version of the programme in 2001, to add something to attract attention. We III 2003 15–20 July Last quarter 7 7 have been fairly successful.

IV 2004 19–23 July Last quarter 3 3 In addition, there are some global statistics on the past ten editions of the V 2005 04–08 July New 5 4 Astronomy Week that give a hint of the variety. Excluding exhibitions, documen- VI 2006 05–10 July Full 5 5 taries and night-time sessions (not every year) we have had 40 talks by nine differ- VII 2007 11–15 July New 0 0 ent speakers, and the two of us contributed to only about half of these. Ten Sun- VIII 2008 23–27 June Waning gibbous 1 1 observing sessions had 50% success (the weather was poor in the other half) while Table 1. A summary of the Astronomy Weeks from 2003 to 2008 (III to VIII). The dates are shown (all occurred in only two out of nine AstroFestas were can- June or July), as well as the phase of the Moon (relevant for the AstroParty). Also the number of different astron- celled due to bad weather, indicating an ex- omy courses and speakers is given. cellent choice of site (Achada do Teixeira).

26 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

Notes

1 http://www.uma.pt/astro (retrieved on 8/1/2012) 2 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ Enaa/index.htm (retrieved on 8/1/2012) 3 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ Semana_astro/Semana1/index.htm (retrieved on 8/1/2012) 4 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ Semana_astro/Semana2/semana2.htm (retrieved on 8/1/2012) 5 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ Curso/index.htm (retrieved on 8/1/2012) 6 http://www.uma.pt/aia09(retrieved on 8/1/2012) 7 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ Semana_astro/Semana5/Einstein/index.htm (retrieved on 8/1/2012) Figure 4. The Astronomy Week exhibition during the IYA2009: a sample of the best constructions in made 8 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ Hands-On Universe activities by some of the 900 students who have attended our Laboratory over the years. AIA2009/iniciativas.htm (retrieved on 8/1/2012) The future format (2011 onwards) endar, and is well attended by the public. 9 http://www.astronomy2009.org/globalpro - Some global statistics on the past ten ver- jects/cornerstones/darkskiesawareness/ After our great IYA2009 regional experi- sions of the Astronomy Week show that (retrieved on 8/1/2012) ence, we have established relevant con- we had 40 talks by nine different speak- 10 http://www3.uma.pt/Investigacao/Astro/ tacts with local authorities and we are now ers, ten Sun-observing sessions, and nine AIA2009/Files/palestra_apagao_CLobos.pps exploring possibilities for future events. A AstroFestas. By numbers, these were the (retrieved on 8/1/2012) necessidade aguça o engenho (Necessity major events. We believe these informal sharpens the tool), as we say in Portugal. education activities for the society might So, we have moved out of the University change the way Madeirans see culture, and gone closer to the people, as we did and broaden their perspective so that sci- during the IYA2009. We are now in the ence is included. process of completely revolutionising the Astronomy Week. Starting in 2011, we plan The main conclusion is that it is worth to organise it in a different concelho (bor- “pushing” astronomy to the general public. ough) every year. There are 11 in Madeira, People are clearly receptive, even if the im- including the other inhabited island, Porto pact varies from year to year. Local authori- Santo. For 2011 we have arranged a “con- ties might be more receptive to these activ- test”, open to all concelhos to select the ities than universities (at least in Portugal). Biographies one which would like to host all our activities, including the AstroParty (the site for Our hope is that soon, Madeira, with its this will be selected from the darkest in the UNESCO World Heritage Forest, will be- Pedro Augusto is Aggregate Professor at borough, which will likely be among the come a reference point with respect to ob- the University of Madeira, Portugal, currently on leave. He arrived on Madeira in 1997 and highest sites). The runner-up might be then servational astronomy, just as McInnes devoted all the time left from maths/phys- automatically selected as hosts in 2012, (1981) suggested. And, as a consequence, ics teaching and administration to setting up when a new competition will be opened up that some of the million tourists a year will an Astronomy Group. Intensive teaching on for 2013, and so on. So far, the local author- be of the scientific type. astronomy and the beginning of large scale Public Awareness of Astronomy at Madeira ities are surprising us and showing a lot followed, culminating in IYA2009. of interest in taking part in this challenge. References Laurindo Sobrinho is an Assistant Professor at the University of Madeira, Portugal. He has Conclusions Augusto, P. 2011, Proceedings of Science, in been a member of the Astronomy Group since press. its founding in 2000 (and the head of the group since September 2010). Over the years he has Our Semanas da Astronomia programme McInnes, B. 1981, Site Testing on Hawaii, participated in many outreach activities within has been running for eleven years. There Madeira and the Canary-Islands, Quarterly the areas of astronomy and science in general has been coverage in the news in the local Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, (lectures, observing sessions, exhibitions). In 22, 266. particular he was active on the organisation of press/TV/radio every year, and is the astro- IYA2009 in Madeira. nomical highlight of the year in Madeira. It has become a regular feature of the cal-

Astronomy Week in Madeira, Portugal 27 Cerberus: The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment Innovations

J. S. S. van ‘t Woud J. A. C. Sandberg B. J. Wielinga BlackShore – creative Informatics Institute, FNWI Informatics Institute, FNWI ESA business incubation programme University of Amsterdam University of Amsterdam Noordwijk, Netherlands Amsterdam, Netherlands Amsterdam, Netherlands E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Keywords: Mars, Crowdsourcing, Serious Gaming, Citizen Scientist

Summary

This article discusses the use of crowdsourcing in a serious game. A computer game, called Cerberus, which allows players to tag surface features on Mars, has been developed. Developing the game has allowed us to investigate the effects of different help levels in supporting the transfer of knowledge, and also how changing the game features can affect the quality of the gaming experience. The performance of the players is measured in terms of precision and motivation. Pre- cision reflects the quality of the work done and motivation is represented by the amount of work done by the players. Games with an explicit help function combined with a “rich gaming experience” resulted in significantly more motivation among the players than games with an implicit help function combined with a “poor gaming experience”. There was no significant difference in the precision achieved under different game conditions, but it was high enough to generate Martian maps exposing aeolian processes, surface layering, river meanders and other concepts. The players were able to assimilate deeper concepts about Martian geology, and the data from the games were of such high quality that they could be used to support scientific research.

Introduction Gaming for science Players are encouraged to play the game by Because crowdsourcing demands a cer- earning points and the chance to earn “sci- Crowdsourcing science uses many individ- tain effort from its contributors, the play- entific glory” (Viñas, 2008; The Economist, uals (the crowd) to process scientific data ers must be motivated to participate. Two 2008). Another example is Galaxy Zoo, an and is mainly used with datasets where hu- methods are utilised: 1. Small financial initiative in which galaxies and their behav- man perception exceeds the capabilities of rewards are offered for processing data iour are classified by users (Darg et al., computers. Humans are still often better units. 2. The computer game environment 2009). Astronomers can only cover a small and faster than automatic devices at rec- is made sufficiently entertaining that play- portion of the amount of data that needs ognising shapes and objects (Hoffmann, ers will process data for free. to be analysed, so the data is prioritised, 2009). This project investigates whether and new discoveries may remain hidden in the crowd can recognise and apply high The concept of crowdsourcing has proven the lower priority data. This is where Galaxy level semantic concepts to features in itself in serving science. The quality of the Zoo comes in. The players analyse the pho- photos of the Martian surface and thus data analysis performed by crowds within tographs collectively, so that each time a support scientific research. In this research certain fields of research is superior to the photograph is analysed the reliability of the project, crowdsourcing was conducted us- results obtained by individuals and even classifications in the galaxy database ining a serious game. Different types of help sometimes to those of the experts involved creases. The results prove to be just as ac- function were investigated to establish (Hoffmann, 2009). curate as if the analysis had been carried the level required to provide players with out by expert astronomers. By the end of enough knowledge for them to identify sur- An example of a serious crowdsourcing the year 2009 over 220 000 people had par- face features on Mars. Another research game used for science is Foldit, a game ticipated in this project and they had con- goal was to investigate which game fea- in which players create new protein chains. tributed to the discovery of a new type of tures are needed to motivate players. The goal is to contribute to cancer research. object (Charles, 2009).

28 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

Exploring Mars Knowledge is added. These levels are derived from Since November 2006 NASA’s Mars Panofsky’s (1962) and Shatford’s (1986) Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has used t models, but each differentiates between in- Type the High Resolution Imaging Science 1. Technique dividual objects and the scene as a whole. 2. Global Distribution Experiment (HiRISE) to acquire data about Syntax/Percep In order to describe these six conceptual the surface of Mars. The MRO transmits 3. Local Structure levels, from general to specific, an increas- 4. Global Composition colour imaging data back to Earth, cover 5. Generic Objects ing level of knowledge about the subject is ing objects with sizes down to 25 centi required (Hollink, 2004). The annotations oncept6. Generic Scene C metres. This high level of detail generates 7. Specific Objects for BaM are confined to the perceptual lev- a vast amount of data that needs to be an- 8. Specific Scene els (levels 1 to 4, Figure 1) with the occa-

mantics/Visual9. Abstract Objects e alysed (McEwen, 2010). The first research S sional cautious foray into the first concep- 10. Abstract Scene phase, or Primary Science Phase (PSP), tual level (NASA & Microsoft, 2009), as, for ran until December 2008 and has photo- Figure 1. Ten-level model (Jaimes, 2000). example, a crater would be categorised as graphed approximately 0.55% of the plan- a generic object within Jaimes’s model. et’s surface, consisting of 8 terapixel of data (McEwen et al., 2009). The scientific Martian map. As a reward the user earns However, when we look at the HiRISE re- research covers 18 themes, such as differ- experience points and rewards in the form search themes, annotations that are con- ent types of erosion, with each theme pro- of medals, badges and “inside” NASA in- fined to the perceptual levels are no longer cessing specific surface features to learn formation (NASA & Microsoft, 2009). sufficient. The themes, for example, de- more about Mars. scribe specific geological processes and Knowledge levels therefore demand a deeper level of knowl- The non-academic world can participate Jaimes (2000) presented a model which edge to be able to recognise and describe in HiRISE via an Education and Public describes images in terms of ten different them (McEwen, et al., 2009). In terms of Outreach (EPO) initiative (McEwen et al., levels of perception and semantics. The Jaimes’s model (2000) the HiRISE research 2009). The Clickworkers project is an ex- model is shown schematically in Figure 1, themes would position themselves within ample. This was a “citizen science” initia- with the first four perceptual levels at the the specific and abstract conceptual levels tive whereby internet users had to classify top of the pyramid. The topmost level de- (levels 7–10 in Figure 1). The specificlevels and annotate geological objects such as scribes the image in terms of its most basic could describe processes like wind ero- dunes and craters to generate a searchable properties, such as the JPEG 2000 file for- sion, while the abstract levels could con- database (McEwen et al., 2009). NASA’s mat of the HiRISE images (HiRISE, 2009). cern hidden craters buried beneath the researchers assumed that the average The next three perceptual levels go deeper planet surface, which cannot be seen di- person had enough commonsense knowl- into the superficial features of the image rectly with the eye (HiRISE, 2009). edge to accurately screen photographs for and describe colour, shape and texture, craters. Starting in November 2000, over distinguishing between characteristics of The current generation of Mars games cre- 80 000 people measured two million cra- the image as a whole, its distinguishable ated by NASA and Microsoft (2009) only ters and classified the age of 300 000 cra- elements and the composition of these el- extends to the generic levels (levels 5 and 6 ters in a year (Szpir, 2002). ements (Hollink, 2004; Jaimes, 2000). The in Figure 1), which do not go deep enough general image characteristics described to make annotations within the HiRISE Become a Martian by these perceptual levels show a strong (2009) research themes. But can users In November 2009, the website, Become a resemblance to the way in which the types reach a deeper semantic level without pos- Martian (BaM), was launched on Microsoft’s of feature that have to be picked out and sessing expert knowledge? (Darg, 2009; Developers Conference as a cooperation annotated in Galaxy Zoo and Be a Martian Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2001) between Microsoft and NASA. Two games are categorised. Whether crater counting are offered through this interface and or classifying galaxies the user has to rec- which allow users to simultaneously learn ognise circles or varieties of them. The user The problem about Mars and contribute to planetary also has to align patterns, and both these exploration. Microsoft and NASA empha- tasks can be carried out without special- The investigations into whether crowd- sise that BaM does not only inform people ist knowledge (Charles, 2009; NASA & sourcing using a game can be used to about Mars and NASA’s activities, but that Microsoft, 2009). make annotations within the specific levels it enables large groups of people to ana- (levels 7 and 8 in Figure 1) or even within the lyse data in a field where computers still lag The six “lower” semantic (or conceptual) still higher abstract levels (levels 9 and 10 behind (Brown, 2009; Microsoft, 2009). An levels are divided into generic, specific and in Figure 1), and using the HiRISE research introductory movie is shown in the Martian abstract levels, each of which is further themes, have covered three aspects. Map Room and then the first game intro- subdivided into “object” and “scene” cat- duces the user to measuring and counting egories. Working down through this hier Motivation craters. In the second game photographs archy, within the generic level, objects and Firstly, it is important to define how a player have to be aligned; a task that is difficult to actions are generally tagged; within the can be motivated to apply knowledge to do automatically because Mars does not specific level these objects and actions are the HiRISE photo data. How important have a GPS network. Fragments of satel- named individually; and within the abstract are the game elements in motivating the lite images are overlaid to generate a rich level contextual information or symbolism player? In BaM and the other examples

Cerberus: The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment 29 FooterCerberus: Main The Title Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment

described above, the motivating elements • H1: Motivation of the players will be ring within the 18 themes on the Martian are point counts, a share in the scientific higher given a rich game experience surface (McEwen et al., 2009). glory, winning medals and having objec- than given a poor game experience. tives (NASA & Microsoft, 2009). But are all • H2: Precision of the players will be higher The first type of feature, Aeolian Processes, these elements required or would a single given explicit knowledge transfer than covers the study of landforms formed by element suffice to motivate the players? given implicit knowledge transfer. wind. The players were asked if they could • H3: The validity of the crowdsourcing find two different types of these struc- Providing the user with enough knowl- results will be highest where knowledge tures: Transverse Aeolian Ridges (TARs) edge transfer is explicit with a rich game con- and honeycomb bedforms. TARs describe Secondly, it is important to provide the dition. three levels of linear wind erosion in the player with enough specialist knowledge form of ripples and dunes, while the three to make annotations within the specific lev- levels of honeycomb bedforms are circu- els (levels 7 and 8 in Figure 1). Can some- Method lar (Zimbleman, 2009; Bridges, 2010). The one acquire the necessary knowledge, i.e., second type of feature, Gullies and River without explicit instruction by just playing A two by two factor design was created re- Meanders, relates to places on Mars where the game? In this situation knowledge is sulting in four possible game conditions there could have been water in the past and transferred implicitly with minimal support shown in Table 1. The independent vari- thus could have been caused by water ero- and a player is then expected to be able ables were implicit or explicit knowledge sion (Berman, 2010; McEwen, 2006; NWT, to apply the acquired knowledge correctly. transfer and a poor or a rich gaming expe- 2010). The third type, Layers, relates to The alternative is to transfer knowledge ex- rience. The dependent variables were the vertically ordered ground. Layers are often plicitly by instructing the player, as in the levels of motivation and precision the play- created by sediments that have been laid BaM games, where the player is offered ers were able to achieve, while validity in- down by water, dust storms, volcanic erup- educational movies and other kinds of help dicated the performance as a collective. tions or crater impacts (Grant, 2010; Beyer, (NASA & Microsoft, 2009). 2009). The fourth category, Anomalies, is A computer game was constructed match- different from the other three because it is Validity of the results ing the four game conditions and their in- not specifically defined, but caters for the During the game players annotate MRO dependent variables (Table 1). Other than case when a player recognises something photos, and it is important that the data these differences all the game conditions strange that does not fit into any particu- (the annotated photos) can be used in the were identical in every aspect. This sec- lar category, but which could still be in- context of the HiRISE research themes tion will first describe which data were an- teresting, such as, for example, strangely (McEwen et al., 2009). The validity of the alysed, then it will discuss the game func- coloured mountains, strange shapes or results depends on the reliability and sig- tions that were similar for each game even Mars landers like the Phoenix lander nificance of the annotations (factors). The condition, and it will conclude with a de- (Bridges, 2006). reliability is measured by the precision of scription of the differences between the the annotations made by the players. The conditions. The photos annotated by the players cov- significance relates to the number of play- ered all four types of feature and were care- ers who make similar annotations on the A. The dataset and knowledge to be fully preselected. Eight photos were ex- same objects. Both reliability and signifi- applied tracted from the HiRISE database and a cance are important if the generated data The dataset consisted of photos that had ninth photo was created manually which is to be used for scientific research. been pre-processed and described by re- functioned as a training map. This photo searchers using criteria related to the 18 was a synthesis of all the other pho- The research questions HiRISE research themes. The photos then tos welded together using photo editing The primary research question is: had to be annotated with Mars features by software. Each photo had a resolution of • Is crowdsourcing in the form of a seri- the players and compared to expert de- 25 cm2 per pixel, covering a surface of ous game applicable for annotation in a scriptions to test how the players had per- 300 m2. Each was downloaded in colour semantically-rich research domain? formed both collectively and individually. (better for context) and infrared (better for Specifically, players were asked to recog- detail). The players could shift between The secondary research questions are: nise four important types of feature occur- these two views using a slider. • Are the players motivated enough by a poor game experience, or is a rich game Poor gaming experience Rich gaming experience experience essential? • Can we transfer the domain specific ––/––/–– ++/+/+ Implicit knowledge transfer knowledge in an implicit manner, or is (condition 1) (condition 3) explicit instruction essential? • Will the annotations made by the players ––/++/+ ++/++/++ Explicit knowledge transfer be usable for science? (condition 2) (condition 4) Notation: Hypothesis: The hypotheses Motivation/Precision/Validity (condition#) Based on the research questions the following hypotheses can be derived: Table 1. Factor table for testing the hypotheses.

30 CAPjournal,CAPjournal, No.No. 12,12, AprilMay 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

Figure 3. Annotated ripples and dunes.

D. Poor game experience versus a rich experience Section 2 described several motiva- tional functions in existing games, including counting scores, rewards for certain achievements, a share in any scientific glory and an active social network (NASA & Microsoft, 2009; Hoffmann, 2009; Charles, 2009; Dartnell, 2009). The conditions with Figure 2. Game interface. a poor game experience only had a simple scoring system to provide the player Each photo was divided into 144 squares tions. Also each condition started with a with minimal feedback. The rich game ex- which the players had to annotate with the training phase so players could become fa- perience had an additional extra palette of features they had discovered. Figure 2 miliar with the interface and with Mars. This game-stimulating functions inspired by ex- demonstrates the interface containing the phase differed in the way it was built up for isting games, including the selection of a annotation tools (bottom). Each tool is ar- the poor and the rich game conditions. The personal avatar, promotion in a fictitious ranged by type and represented by its own poor game conditions only required play- operational hierarchy on Mars, rewards for icon. The tools are from left to right: ripples, ers to score a total of 3380 points before certain actions such as using the infrared dunes, draas honeycomb levels 3, 2 and proceeding to the main game, while the tool, and the missions used in training. 1, river meanders, layers and anomalies. rich game conditions included short missions that had to be completed and a to- E. The test group When a player annotates a feature he gains tal score of 3380 points as prerequisites. Each player was randomly assigned to a a point and this point is added to the total The training photo was pre-annotated us- game condition during registration to gen- number of annotations previously made by ing information from the scientific litera- erate a uniform distribution of players in others for that feature on that square. This ture, so players experienced the game as age, gender and pre-knowledge about new total is then the amount credited to the if other players had previously annotated Mars over the four conditions. Players were player’s individual score. So for example, if the photo. In this way new players were re- recruited via direct mailing and by starting a player marks a dune and eight other play- warded for making correct annotations as community topics in internet forums related ers had previously marked the dune then they would be in the game. Completion of to games, science and Mars. the player is rewarded with nine points, and the training unlocked the real Mars photos the next player to mark the dune would get so that players could begin annotating in ten points, and so on. Thus the game re- earnest. Results wards good behaviour and encourages players to do their best. C. Explicit versus implicit The game, called Cerberus, after the myth- The explicit and implicit game condi- ological dog, was launched on 17 July Figure 3 shows the player’s view with some tions had different help functions. The im- 500 436.9 annotated features. In these example grid plicit game condition only had a first level significant 400 squares the player can see the points as- “mouse-over” help function which very y

300 239.1 signed to the ripple (RI) and dune (DU) an- roughly described what each tool did. It 221.4 training notations he has made. Note the only neg- did not give any examples nor did it sup- 200 117.9 Mean of similarit ative feedback is the low score received ply the knowledge needed for players to 100 when an error is made, while a high score know where to look. The explicit game con- 0 1 (Poor+Implicit) 2 (Poor+Explicit) 3 (Rich+Implicit) 4 (Rich+Explicit) represents positive feedback. Each of the dition added two additional levels of help. Conditions features to be marked in the game was The second level help function was shown represented by one or more tools that the when a player clicked on a tool and dis- 500 395.29 player could select. Each new annotation played a brief description of what to look 400 was transmitted to a database and the set at and was always in scope. The third level 368.6 300 of accumulated annotations formed the was the most detailed help level and was training Help 200 dataset used in this research. accessible by clicking on the question 176.32 Game stimulation

Mean of similarity 176.5 marks. This level showed what to do and 100

B. The main game what to look for in great detail. The help 0 Absent Present The dataset, the annotation module used texts used information from the scientific Conditions to mark features and the basic scoring sys- literature, but were written specifically for tem were identical for all four game condi- the game. Figure 4. Mean of motivation.

CAPjournal,Cerberus: TheNo. 12,Mars April Crowdsourcing 2012 Experiment 31 Cerberus: The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment

Passed Age Age Male Female Motivation Motivation Precision Precision Condition N Prop. Training Male Female (mean) (sDev) (prop) (prop) (mean) (sDev) (mean) (sDev) (n and prop)

1 27 20.8 % 4 17.8 % 26.89 13.08 19 8 70.4 % 29.6 % 117.9 131 0.483 0.432

2 26 20.0 % 6 23.1 % 29.81 14.36 21 5 80.8 % 19.2 % 239.1 471 0.407 0.359

3 35 26.9 % 9 25.7 % 27.79 6.24 31 4 88.6 % 11.4 % 221.4 336.4 0.39 0.293

4 42 32.3 % 22 52.3 % 33.21 16.28 35 7 83.4 % 16.6 % 436.9 513.7 0.626 0.176

Table 2. Numerical breakdown by condition.

2010. On 18 August 2010 the database adding either a rich game experience or initiative, and thus into how players per- containing data from 151 players was ex- explicit help does not add enough to be formed as a collective. tracted. After removing test accounts, significantly different from condition 1. spam and people who never logged in, To check for validity, all the player results for the group was reduced to 130. The com- each condition are now taken together and position and some results of the research Precision their similarity (sl) is calculated. Similarity is groups and its corresponding conditions a measurement comparing the collective are shown in Table 2. In this section the re- Precision is measured by comparing each data with the expert annotation. Because sults measuring the motivation, precision individual annotation with the expert anno- the number of annotations per feature per and the validity, which indicates whether tation. The expert annotation is based on player varies from 0 to 15 (15 meaning that the data could be used for scientific re- descriptions in the literature about Mars’s 15 players made the same annotation in- search, will be discussed. geological features. Each photograph is dependently) with a mean of 0.789 for the pre-annotated by the experts to test the entire data collection, all marked expert A. Motivation players’ precision. Table 2 in the column features are assigned a target of ten anno- Motivation is about the eagerness of the Precision shows the results from each con- tations. This means that ten players need players to play Cerberus. It is measured by dition. A mean score of 1.0 implies max- to make an identical annotation agreeing the total number of annotations, or clicks, imum precision (no errors) while a score with the expert to gain a similarity of 1.0, made by the players. The more annota- of 0.0 implies the player is wrong. To test and for 15 player annotations the similarity tions a player makes the more time and which condition performed better a One- would be 1.5. Similarities greater than one effort they have spent playing. A one-way Way ANOVA is conducted. No training pho- indicate that the collective (crowd) has out- ANOVA was conducted to test whether the tographs were included in this calculation. performed the expert (Hoffmann, 2009). If mean motivation differed among the con- Precision (pr) is calculated by testing each neither the collective nor the expert made ditions. In this measurement each annota- player-annotated feature (fpl) per square any annotations for a particular feature the tion per photo per player was counted, in- (sqr) with the expert annotated feature (fexp). similarity was also 1.0 as the collective was cluding the training photo. The motivation Note each square can have a maximum not in error. For this reason all eventual cal- (m) for each individual player is calculated of eight different annotated features. Each culated similarity means for each condition as follows (f = feature): feature is marked as 1 or 0 (annotated or will be rather high because the largest por- not annotated) in the database. The for- tion of all possible annotations is no anno- m = Σ (photo (Σ tile (Σ f))) mula is as follows: tations at all. This is different from the preci- Σ f + f –1 sion calculation where each individual click pr = pl exp was tested for right or wrong. sqr Σ f Motivation results pl Summarising the similarity calculation for

Figure 4 shows all the motivation results. The results show that for this data, there each square, (slsqr) is calculated by testing

The horizontal line marks the training is no significant difference in precision be- each collective annotation (fcol) with the ex- threshold, which is the minimum required tween the implicit and the explicit gaming pert annotation (fexp) and can be any posi- sum of 194 annotations to pass the train- conditions. ing mission. There was a significant differ- 1.15 1.113 ence between condition 1 and condition 4 1.1 (see Table 1), i.e. players were more eager Validity for science 1.05 to participate in crowdsourcing using a se- expert 1 rious game with extended help in combi- Until now motivation and precision were Mean of similarity 0.935 0.95 0.93 nation with rich game elements. The two discussed as measurements based on an 0.9 not significant intermediate game conditions in between individual basis. However, this approach 0.9 1 (Poor+Implicit) 2 (Poor+Explicit) 3 (Rich+Implicit) 4 (Rich+Explicit) (2 and 3) showed no significant differences does not give any insight into the perfor- Conditions with either condition 1 or condition 4. So mance of Cerberus as a crowdsourcing Figure 5. Similarity.

32 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

is remarkable that the precision standard functions per game condition, but it is not deviation tended to narrow in the explicit yet clear what the effects of each separately help and rich game conditions, implying a are. For example the explicit help function higher consensus among players in mak- adds a second and a third help level, so ing annotations. Condition 4 showed the claims can only be made about these func- highest mean of precision and had the low- tions combined, but not separately. The est standard deviation. When investigating same applies to the rich game conditions. the similarity results of the collective, con- Cerberus has avatars, rewards, rankings dition 4 also demonstrated a significantly and more enriching game elements, but it is higher similarity than any other condition. not yet clear what the effects are of avatars Figure 6. The possible tower and the Phoenix. or any other of these functions in isolation. Cerberus as a platform is being developed Conclusion further and meanwhile is participating in the tive value when there is similarity, and is 0 European Space Agency (ESA) business when there is no similarity. Before apply- While it cannot be proven that the level of incubator programme. With technological ing this formula to the dataset, each fea- instruction had any effect on precision, aid directly coming from ESA, Cerberus is ture where there was neither an expert nor and thus on the acquired knowledge of the now being professionally developed and di- a collective annotation was upgraded to players, it did show a significant effect on rectly targeted at crowdsourcing, e-learn- 10 manually. This ensured that the formula the players’ motivation. The collective re- ing, gaming and outreach. Other applica- calculated a similarity of 1.0 for all the un- sults did show a significantly better similar- tions where Cerberus could be used are marked features. The formula is: ity with the expert data for the explicit game being explored, such as assisting climate- conditions, so for overall success, explicit change research or in any field where sat- fcol.fexp Σ instruction is essential. The rich game con- ellite photographs could be translated into sl = 100 sqr 8 ditions scored significantly better for moti- Geographical Information System data. vation than the poor game conditions. Yet More about Cerberus’s current progress, Qualitative results the rich game condition without explicit along with the most recent playable version The anomaly tool was available in all game help did not motivate the players signifi- can be found at www.cerberusgame.com. conditions and it was used for a total of 67 cantly better or worse than any other condi- annotations. Most of these annotations were tion. The rich game with explicit help does for craters, strange spots, sediments and score significantly better than the condition References rocks, but some rarer objects were found, with implicit help and a poor game expe- and which were “marked” objects by the ex- rience. Therefore we conclude that a rich Berman, D. 2010, Northern Hemisphere Gullies pert. The first object is the strange yellow game condition is indeed essential, but on West-Facing Crater Slope: http://hirise.lpl. rock, of which some unknown expert anno- it must be combined with explicit help to arizona.edu/ESP_017405_2270 (Retrieved tated as an outgassing tufa tower. The other be effective. The annotations made under 18/12/2011) object is the Pathfinder lander (Bridges, condition 4, explicit help and a rich game Bridges, N. T. 2010, Images Mars Pathfinder 2006). People have described it as a white experience showed a high similarity to the Site (PSP_001890_1995), http://hirise.lpl. spot, a pod or a balloon. Figure 6 shows the expert annotations. Moreover the players arizona.edu/PSP_001890_1995 (Retrieved 14/7/2011) possible tufa tower (left) and the Pathfinder generated more results collectively be- lander’s pod and its balloon (right). cause the expert missed some features. Bridges, N. et al. 2010, Icarus, 205, 165 Some players did actually re-discover the Brown, D. & Webster, G. 2009, NASA and Phoenix lander — somewhat of a needle in Microsoft Allow Earthlings to Become Discussion a haystack task. In conclusion, we can say Martians . (Retrieved January 15, 2010) from that the annotations performed by the play- NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/home/ hqnews/2009/nov/HQ_09-268_Be_a_Mar- Motivation was significantly higher in con- ers are indeed of use for science. tian.html dition 4 where there was explicit help and a rich game experience. Precision did not The answer to the main question, whether 2001, Four clicks is a crater, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June, 11–12 show any significant differences between crowdsourcing in the form of a serious any of the conditions although there was a game used for annotation in a semanti- Charles, L., Arkel, H. v. & Schwawinski, K. 2009, Natural History, 118, 5, 40 noticeable increase in conditions with ex- cally-rich research domain is possible, is plicit help, perhaps because in the con- positive. While there still can be discussion Darg, D. et al. 2009, Monthly Notices, 401, 1043 ditions where players were not motivated about the implicit or explicit learning con- Dartnell, L. 2009, Natuur Wetenschap & enough most gave up long before comple- ditions and the effects on individual preci- Techniek, 3, 34 tion of the training phase due to boredom sion, the players did manage to generate Grant, J. A. et al. 2010, Icarus, 205, 53 or the lack of clear goals, and so did not an accurate map of the Mars photographs HiRISE, 2009, Science Themes from HiRISE: contribute to the final dataset. This meant as a collective and thus were able to apply High Resolution Imaging Science Experi- there were very few players whose results deeper semantic knowledge. ment: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/science_ could be used to calculate the precision themes/themes.php, Retrieved 30/12/2010) in the poor game conditions, and so the Cerberus has not come to an end with this Hoffmann, L. 2009, Communications of the results in these cases might be biased. It study. Cerberus as a game has a lot of ACM, 52, 3, 18

Cerberus: The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment 33 Cerberus: The Mars Crowdsourcing Experiment

Hollink, L. et al. 2004, Int. Journal of Human- NWT 2010, Natuur Wetenschap & Techniek, Computer Studies, 61, 5, 601 78, 2, 10 Biography Jaimes, A. & Chang, S.-F. 2000, IS&T/SPIE Panofsky, E. 1962, Studies in Iconology. In S. Internet Imaging, 3964 Manghani, A. Piper, & J. Simons, Images: a McEwen, A. S. 2006, Stereo Anaglyphs of River reader, 86–89 Hans van ‘t Woud (1983) was born in Leiden, Meanders in Eberswalde Delta Beyer, R. 2009, Volcanic Layers Exposed in Pit the Netherlands, and studied Human Centred (PSP_001534_1560), 2010, from HiRISE: (ESP_012310_1715) , from HiRISE: http:// Multimedia at the University of Amsterdam where he was awarded his MSc degree for http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_012310_1715 this research. Before this he graduated with a PSP_001534_1560 (Retrieved 14/10/2011) Retrieved 14/6/2011 Bachelor’s degree from Rotterdam University, McEwen, A. S., Herkenhoff, K. E., & Keszthelyi, Shatford, S. 1986, Cataloging and Classifica- and in part also, the Willem de Kooning Acad- L. P. 2010, Introduction to the High Reslution tion Quarterly, 6(3), 66–74 emy of Arts, in Communication and Multimedia Design. After this he worked a period as prod- Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), Szpir, M. 2002, American Scientist, 90, 3 Icarus, 205, 1, 1 uct manager for a company involving health- The Economist, 2008, Return to the fold, 387, care software. During his Master’s study at the Microsoft, 2009, From the Cloud to the Crowd: 91–91 University of Amsterdam he participated in a NASA and Mircrosoft Ask Citizen Scientists project regarding learning with mobile devices, Vidani, A. C. & Chittaro, L. 2009, Conference to “Be a Martian”, from Microsoft News where he was responsible for the general inter- in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Center: http://www.microsoft.com/press- face design. Nowadays he is a fulltime entre- Applications, 95–102 pass/features/2009/nov09/11-17BeAMartian. preneur for his company, BlackShore — cre- mspxm (Retrieved 14/12/2011) Viñas, M. J., Baker, D. & Popovic, Z. 2008, ative, where he is taking Cerberus to the next Chronicle of Higher Education, 54, 43, A5 level. For this he is collaborating closely with NASA & Microsoft 2009, Age of Virtual Explora- and participating in the ESA business incubation & the Human-Robotic Partnership, Zimbelman, J. R. 2009, Geomorphology, 1–8 tion centre in the Netherlands. NASA Be A Martian: http://beamartian.jpl. nasa.gov (Retrieved 20/11/2011)

Carbon Based Lifeforms @ Cosmonova:

Reviews A Concert in Sight and Sound for IYA2009

Tom Callen Keywords Eyemmersive, Sweden International Year of Astronomy 2009, Arts, e-mail: [email protected] Music, Lightshow

Summary

Replacing its conventional analogue planetarium with a digital fulldome system, the Cosmonova theatre at the Swedish Museum of Natural History sought to come up with a variety of public offerings for the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Besides several fulldome shows it was decided that a concert of live music would both celebrate the year as well as attempt to attract a new audience.

Originally planned as a conventional plan- large-format IMAX films, a number of orig- vious that an upgrade was needed to bring etarium, Cosmonova opened in mid-Octo- inal planetarium shows were created that the theatre into the 21st century. ber 1992 as a combined ImaxDome 15/70 involved both Digistar and analogue me- large-format film theatre and an Evans & dia, such as 35 mm slides, videos, custom- After the renovation, Cosmonova planned Sutherland Digistar I video planetarium, built all-sky projectors that cover the dome to show a selection of astronomy- both operating within the same 23-metre and offered spectacular special effects, related fulldome video shows during the dome. With a 30-degree tilt the dome cov- and even astronomy-themed IMAX film International Year of Astronomy 2009, as ers a large part of the audience’s periph- clips. While Cosmonova was one of the well as featuring a small mini-exhibit with eral vision, making for a very immersive ex- most technically advanced facilities in the some historical telescopes outside the the- perience. Besides showing ”off-the-peg” world when it opened, by 2006 it was ob- atre’s entrance. It was also thought that a

34 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012

Figure 1. Kokopelli, the humpbacked rain god and Figure 2. Hundreds of galaxies fill Cosmonova’s Figure 3. SCISS AB’s Uniview™ rendition of the muse of music for a number of Native American tribes dome in this image from the Hubble Space Tele- International Space Station (ISS) hangs in orbit some from southwestern US states, descends from the scope. Transformed into a three-dimensional video, 350 kilometres above Earth’s surface. Since the summer skies over the ruins of Wukoki, a structure it was possible to travel through them just as if one members of Carbon Based Lifeforms were so taken built by an ancient pueblo people in Arizona, south of were travelling through the real Universe. with a demonstration of the ISS in Cosmonova Flagstaff. Credit: T. Callen and Cosmonova. Credit: NASA/ESA, T. Callen and Cosmonova. one whole song in the concert, MOS 6581, featured it. Credit: T. Callen and Cosmonova. live concert in the theatre with an astro- creating musical light shows as far back had taken, as well as to prepare scanned nomical and/or space theme would go over as the late 1970s when I was a gradu- all-sky images that had originally been shot well. Cosmonova had hosted several live ate student at Michigan State University’s on 120 roll or 4 inch × 5 inch sheet film concerts in the past and produced appro- Abrams Planetarium in the US, this was with special ProDome all-sky cameras. priate visuals to show on the dome over- going to be both a challenge and a lot of Wondertouch’s particleIllusion 3.0 soft- head. A general call for suggestions to the fun. CBL hadn’t set any restrictions, so the ware was used to generate a video clip of whole Museum staff bore fruit in the form concert’s visuals could go in any direction a dome full of microscopic paramecium- of an idea from Hanna Taylor, who worked that seemed appropriate. Since I was now like life scurrying around. One original in one of the research departments. She working in a completely digital domain, video clip had its origins in a film I made of knew of a Swedish ambient electronic mu- production techniques had changed sig- sunlight obliquely reflecting off of the tops sic group, Carbon Based Lifeforms (CBL), nificantly in the years since I had made of waves on the bay in front of my house whose music might be suitable. CBL was the visuals for Cosmonova’s previous live on the island of Rindö in the Stockholm also a group that had performed live in a music concerts. Instead of having to use archipelago. variety of different types of venues so play- Digistar, 35 mm slides, videos and all-skies ing under a planetarium dome would not synchronised via an automation system I Adobe AfterEffects CS3 was then used to be a problem for them. had a whole new palette of digital tools at compose all the various visual elements my disposal on the fulldome video sys- against each of the seven individual music CBL formed in 1996 and at the time of the tem’s production workstation. tracks. In order to check the synch between concert consisted of members Johannes audio and visuals, low resolution test ren- Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad. Based in SCISS AB’s Uniview is the software used for ders were made as needed. Once the visu- the western coastal city of Göteborg they Cosmonova’s new digital planetarium and als were completed for all the music tracks had three albums to their credit and a wider it was to provide any original astronomi- the whole concert was rendered out in high global following, although much of this was cally-based video clips. Three-dimensional resolution. From there the 132-gigabyte file based in Europe. After a meeting in May camera paths manually “flown” with the was copied onto a portable hard drive and 2009, it was decided to hold a live concert workstation’s mouse could be recorded turned over to Cosmonova’s technicians in Cosmonova late in the year, with CBL to and rendered out of Uniview at 3200 × for a process colloquially known as “carv- provide the music and Cosmonova to pro- 3200 pixel resolution for later processing. ing” (or “slicing and dicing” in some full- vide the visuals. To make the concert even Some examples of clips created in Uniview dome circles). more special to their fan base CBL wanted were flybys of planets, tours between gal- to include three tracks from an as-yet un- axies, a view of the slowly turning band of The standard for image files in a fulldome released album to mix in with others that the Milky Way changing through various video show is circular and known as the were considered to be “classics”. A total of parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, a dome master format. The centre of each seven tracks were decided on, making the scintillating night sky seen from the Arizona dome master image represents the ze- whole show 45 minutes long. desert and the cosmic background radia- nith of the planetarium’s dome while its tion that pervades the Universe. circular edge marks the 360-degree ho- Using copies of all seven live concert tracks rizon with the bottom of the image south for inspiration and reference I set about Adobe Photoshop CS3 was used to create and directly in front of the audience. In our producing the visuals. Having worked with and/or process digital photographs that I system 30 images are shown per second,

Carbon Based Lifeforms @ Cosmonova: A Concert in Sight and Sound for IYA2009 35 Carbon Based Lifeforms @ Cosmonova: A Concert in Sight and Sound for IYA2009

concert the following night. As it turned out the first night sold out completely, while the second night was just short of doing the same. CBL arrived in Stockholm from Göteborg on Thursday and after setting up their equipment and integrating it with Cosmonova’s sound system we had a dress rehearsal to check out the audio and visual elements together on the dome for the first time. Considering the vastness of CBL’s musical soundscape there was only an office tabletop full of their synthe- sisers, laptops and audio equipment, plus Figure 5. Astronomer/Programme Producer Tom Johannes Hedberg’s electric guitar, which Callen in Gamla Stan (Old Town), Stockholm. Credit: C. Russo. Figure 4. Carbon Based Lifeforms, Göteborg, a was fed through outboard sound proces- Swedish ambient electronic music group, and then sors. After several run-throughs to ensure (November 2009) band members Johannes Hedberg that the live version of the concert would cal performance during the International (left) and Daniel Segerstad. Credit: M. Fredriksson and Carbon Based Lifeforms. work, everyone sat down together and Year of Astronomy 2009 and introducing watched the concert while the so-called people who might not normally come to “just in case” emergency back-up sound- Cosmonova to the types of things that they which means that there are 1800 images track provided the music. do. Listening to the audience as they left displayed per minute. Since there are six the theatre it was evident that there were projectors that present a fully blended im- Friday night’s audience was definitely people in attendance who were in this lat- age on the dome of a fulldome video show, made up of hardcore fans as CBL got a ter category, and some made a point of each individual dome master image (some lively response when they entered and took coming up to Cosmonova staffers to tell 81 000 for the 45-minute concert!) must be up their positions in the front stage area of them that they would be back to see some split into six pieces (for a total of 486 000 the theatre. At the end of the concert they of their other show offerings. pieces); one complete set for each video received a standing ovation, and, based projector’s associated file server. In order on people’s reactions as they left the the- Could it be done again? I think that both to do this, a special program “carves” the atre, the concert was a success. A special Carbon Based Lifeforms and Cosmonova images into these six video streams while area just outside Cosmonova’s exit, and were pleased with the final results and taking into account the target and blend- within a Museum exhibit area, was set up there is no doubt — based on the posi- ing areas on the dome for each of the six so that the band could “meet and greet” tive comments and the pirate video clips projectors. their fans afterwards, which also saw a lot shot from out in the theatre that were later of CD signing and lively conversations with posted on YouTube (www.youtube.com/ A copy of the concert’s audio was also the band. watch?v=LokHAcHIiVQ, www.youtube. transferred to Cosmonova’s audio serv- com/watch?v=9DEpyze0Zs8 and www. ers as a back-up in the event that CBL’s Saturday night’s audience, while not made youtube.com/watch?v=rgMN9UEH4Zc) equipment had a technical malfunction, al- up mostly of fans, was just as eager with — that the audience would do it again too! though this was thought to be highly un- anticipation. I was standing up front in the likely. Unfortunately, there could be no stage area keeping an eye on the band’s such back-up in the improbable event that equipment as the audience took their seats the fulldome video system developed a when I recognised an elderly woman who I Biography problem. had seen accompanied by a friend of hers from the night before. As she passed by In order to make sure that CBL’s final per- she recognised me and (with a different Tom Callen is the former Astronomer and Pro- gramme Producer at Cosmonova, the Imax- formance would match the visuals, a 720 person in tow that evening) came over to Dome, digital fulldome video planetarium and × 720 pixel low-resolution version of the tell me that: “There were tickets left for to- 3D theatre at the Swedish Museum of Natu- whole concert was sent to the group and night and I just had to come again.” And ral History, Stockholm. Prior to coming to the happily enough they found it to agree to she was not the only person who I saw at- Museum in 1991 he was at the Albert Einstein Planetarium at the Smithsonian Institution’s within a fraction of a second with the music tending both concerts. Clearly this was National Air and Space Museum in Washing- track they would play at the concert. This music that appealed to a variety of ages, ton, DC., for 13 years. He has also worked at was a major relief as the audio work in After as there were people present from grade three other planetariums in the United States. Effects was new to all of us. school and up. As on Friday night the Today Callen is Managing Director of eyemmer- “meet and greet” area outside Cosmonova sive, a newly formed company that specialises in scientific visualisations with an emphasis on We had first planned on only one concert was set up again. space and astronomy applications. Long inter- on Friday, 28 November 2009, but the de- ested in all types of music he currently finds a mand for tickets — even from European- With two successful nights of concerts, more personal music outlet playing “Pratt,” his based fans outside Sweden — was so Cosmonova fulfilled at least two goals; hybrid digital/analogue drum set. great that it was decided to add a second having a live astronomy-related musi-

36 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 Visualising Astronomy: Visualising Exoplanets Reviews

Ryan Wyatt Keywords: California Academy of Sciences, USA Visual Communication, Astronomy Visualisation E-mail: [email protected]

In my previous column1, I described some 1950s) that remove them from occasion- system, then placed into the Hipparchos of the varied means of diagramming the ally more fanciful work of their predeces- star catalogue at the star’s proper location. data about exoplanets and exoplanetary sors. Furthermore, by the time of Miller’s systems. Frankly, however, those methods writing, the space programme had shifted That type of process exists firmly within the don’t do justice to the bigger picture: we from human exploration (always a staple of realm of science visualisation, albeit driven need a wider range of tools to help peo- space art) to robotic voyages: a transition by a more subjective set of criteria than a ple grok2 (to understand intuitively) what from the aspirational (“we will go there”) art typical project, which usually has fewer de- astronomical observations have revealed. of the 1950s and 60s to the inspirational grees of freedom in terms of conveying a (Normally, I use the term “visualisation” to (“wouldn’t it be nice to be there”) art of the concept. (I often joke that the challenge of refer to the visual representation of data, 1970s and 80s. visualising astronomical data boils down to but I’m going to relax that a little in this deciding what colour to make the invisible context; instead, I’ll interpret the word in Established space artists including Lynette gas.) And like much contemporary visual- its more commonplace usage of creating Cook and David A. Hardy (to choose just isation, the scene exists as part of an ani- a mental image.) How can we help people two examples) have lent their images to mated sequence — in this case, fulldome comprehend the scope, the breadth, and press releases about exoplanets. Indeed, video. the impact of the spectacular observations Hardy’s image of tau1 Gruis (Figure 1) of planets around other stars? strikes me as an almost prototypical example of the genre: the viewer, placed on When it comes to imaging other worlds, the surface of a solid body (in this case, space art blazed the trail more than fifty the hypothetical moon of an exoplanet years ago.... The term applies to a variety discovered by the Anglo-Australian Planet of content from highly imaginative covers Search), takes in a dramatic vista that in- of science fiction paperbacks of the last corporates the rugged (exaggerated) ter- century to deeply informed recreations of rain of the moon, the visual counterpoint astronomical objects. The International of the ringed planet and the angular fore- Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) ground, and the highly expressive whorls website3 offers a glimpse at the range of of the giant planet’s clouds. work, as well as a peek into the history of the medium. Coming at the challenge from a different direction, I personally have helped visualise In his 1978 essay, “The Archeology of Space two different exoplanets (and one exoplan- Art,” Ron Miller wrote, “Contemporary art- et’s hypothetical moon) for public planetar- ists certainly have more factual material to ium shows, most recently Gliese 581d for draw upon, yet this abundance also limits the California Academy of Sciences open- them. [...] The phrase ‘artist’s impression’ ing show, Fragile Planet (Figure 2). Dimitar attached to a space painting no longer Sasselov, Director of the Harvard Origins means an imaginary guess.” 4 When Miller of Life Initiative at the Harvard-Smithsonian wrote those words more than three dec- Center for Astrophysics, advised on the Figure 1. Artwork from a 2002 press release describ- ades ago, he applied his thinking to ob- ratio of water to land, the amount of cloud ing the “detection of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting 1 jects in the Solar System — consider how cover, and the distribution of ice on the sur- tau Gruis” exists squarely within the space art tradition of imagined landscapes. Credit: PPARC and radically the Voyager and Pioneer missions face of the “super Earth.” Based on his in- David A. Hardy. transformed our view of other planets — put, we used an array of animation tools and his words date to a period when ac- to create the sequence, with particular re- tual spacecraft imagery had started to ap- liance on Terragen™5, software originally Most contemporary exoplanet illustrations proach artists’ representations in terms of designed for digital matte painting in the owe a bit to both space art and visualisa- quality. And as Miller specifically notes, film industry. The final images appeared tion. For example, in Greg Bacon’s de- discoveries made by those spacecraft mapped onto a sphere with appropriate piction of HR 8799b (Figure 3), we view a put constraints on the artists’ work (e.g., atmospheric effects generated by Uniview ringed planet from the surface of a hypo- the Moon doesn’t have mountains the software6, integrated into a Keplerian plan- thetical moon, but the moon takes on an likes of which Chesley Bonestell painted etary system with orbits based on the ob- appearance reminiscent of the Galileo im- in his famous Colliers series from the served characteristics of the Gliese 581 ages of Ida or the Deep Impact images of

CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 37 Visualising Astronomy: Visualising Exoplanets

Figure 2. A still image from the planetarium show Fragile Planet illustrating a chilly but water-covered Gliese 581d, based on input from an exoplanet specialist and integrated into the three-dimensional Hip- parchos database. Credit: California Academy of Sciences.

Tempel 1. But the whole scene sits in front Figure 3. The “artist’s concept” that accompanied the Hubble press release about archival data refining our of a photorealistic Milky Way, with the other knowledge of HR 8799b. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI). planets in the system visible as points of light against the background stars7. perseded by a radically different image ... Notes (A detail I can’t resist addressing ... Hardy perhaps a reminder that spending weeks favours a bit of accuracy over drama by to match the science carefully may be over- 1 Wyatt, R. 2011, Visualising Astronomy: Visu- depicting a moon that lies in the ring plane thinking the problem.”8 alising Exoplanet Data, CAPjournal, 11, 32 of its parent planet, as one would expect. 2 Heinlein, R. 1961, Stranger in a Strange Bacon chooses a more sensational per- I find it intriguing that exoplanet artwork Land, (London: New English Library Ltd) spective on his ringed world by placing — er, visualisations — reside in this over- 3 http://iaaa.org/ the moon outside the ring plane — a less lap between new and old ways of imag- 4 Miller, Ron 1978, Space Art, p. 10 (retrieved plausible configuration, but the asteroid- ining other worlds. It should come as no from http://dreamsofspace.nfshost.com/ like appearance of the moon suggests a surprise, really, since we operate in a bliss- spaceart.htm on 12 February 2012) captured body that could exist in an in- ful state of combined ignorance and im- 5 http://www.planetside.co.uk/ clined orbit.) agination. And we can expect this situa- 6 http://scalingtheuniverse.com/ tion to persist for some time, because we 7 http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/ Most of the images that illustrate exoplanet can never visit these exoplanets, never releases/2009/15/image/d/ press releases actually involve many more subject ourselves to the same kind of spe- 8 constraints than those Miller decried. The cific constraints that the space artists of the Hurt, R. 2012, Private correspondence, 15 Feb 2012. artwork often needs to communicate a 1970s faced with the rapidly-returning re- specific concept tied to the discovery (e.g., sults from spacecraft missions throughout the derived characteristics of the planet, the Solar System. Instead, the exoplanet the multiplicity of planets in the system) images that accompany press releases Biography and sometimes needs to avoid suggest- will continue to play the role that space art ing a potential future discovery (e.g., the once played for a generation of enthusi- Ryan Wyatt is the Director of Morrison Plan- existence of an exomoon). As Robert Hurt, asts, fuelling the excitement for discover- etarium and Science Visualization at the Cali- of the Spitzer Science Center, puts it, “As ies about the Universe around us. fornia Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the science advances, a second paper can California, USA. He writes a sadly irregular completely overturn the ideas in the previ- blog, Visualizing Science, available online at http:// Visualizingscience.ryanwyatt.net/. ous one, so a carefully constructed visualisation based on one result is often later su-

38 CAPjournal, No. 12, May 2012 Colophon

Editor-in-Chief P. Augusto Paul Murdin Pedro Russo J. L. Sobrinho Pedro Russo J. S. S. van ‘t Woud Sidney Wolff Executive Editor J. A. C. Sandberg Lars Lindberg Christensen B. J. Wielinga Sponsored by: Tom Callen IAU, ESO and EU-Universe Awareness Editor Ryan Wyatt CAPjournal Anne Rhodes Communicating Astronomy Web Design and Development with the Public Journal Layout Raquel Shida ESO ePOD Pedro Russo Lars Holm Nielsen Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Pedro Moura 85748 Garching bei München Mafalda Martins Distribution Germany Mark Beat von Arb Production Oana Sandu E-mail: Mafalda Martins [email protected] IAU DIVISION XII, Contributors Commission 55: Website: Joe Bernstein Communicating Astronomy with www.capjournal.org José Antonio Caballero the Public Oli Usher Journal Working Group Phone: +49 89 320 06 761 Oana Sandu Lars Lindberg Christensen Fax: +49 89 320 2362 Lars Lindberg Christensen Rick Fienberg Peter Barthel Andrew Fraknoi ISSNs Megan Argo Richard de Grijs 1996-5621 (Print) Robert Hollow André Heck 1996-563X (Web) Paul G. Beck Terry Mahoney Georg Zotti Steve Miller

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