The Bicycle Astronomy Project

The Bicycle Astronomy project combines my passion for introducing people to the universe’s wonders and spurring them to think about sustainable transportation. I throw spontaneous star parties all around the city using a “long-tail” cargo bike called a Mundo to carry my observing gear and sandwich-board signs that I set up in Geneva the morning of an event. I also use the cargo bike as my daily form of transportation, and its recognizable silhouette around the city is meant to underscore how cycling is practical, healthy, efficient, and that a car is often unnecessary.

This blog is about astronomy, and cycling, and sometimes about putting both of them together. It’s also about science, nature, and space exploration. The best place to get updates on the project’s Geneva-area events is the Facebook page, Bicycle Astronomy Workshop.

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by DougReilly on May 17, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bicycle Astronomy, outreach

Posted by DougReilly on May 17, 2013

http://bicycleastronomy.org/2013/05/17/the-bicycle-astronomy-project/

The Yuba Mundo in Bicycle Astronomy Livery

As the summer observing season is upon us, I wanted to make the Yuba Mundo more clearly visible as part of the Bicycle Astronomy project. I also wanted to better articulate the goals of the project with these signs, so I gathered up all my PR prowess (and got some help from supporters on the Bicycle Astronomy Facebook page.)

They are printed on waterproof vinyl and taped to the Yuba Mundo wheel skirts, panels made out of recycled plastic designed to keep things, like dangling kid legs, from getting caught in the spokes of the rear wheel. Here is the left side, that most drivers will see as they pass me:

20130522-133501.jpg

Think Galactically, Act Globally! is my take on that tired old Earth Day expression. The view of earth from space has changed our perspective, but the view of earth from the perspective of the galaxy, which we can only extrapolate from what we know of its structure, should give us an even wider perspective. Our earth is the only thing we know for sure that harbors life, and we need to protect it. I also believe that we have to recognize that local vs. global is a bit of an obfuscation. All the millions of local actions (for good or ill) around the world each day add up to a significant global impact. When we act as individuals in a locality, in other words, we are also acting as representatives of a species with global impact.

The other side is this:

20130522-134533.jpg

The two goals of the Bicycle Astronomy project are to inspire people to think more broadly about sustainability by showing them the wonders of the night sky, and to educate people about the utlity of cycling to meet daily transportation needs, including hauling cargo.

The Yuba Mundo serves both goals. It carries the telescope and astronomer to the parks where I do Bicycle Astronomy “star parties”. It is also designed to advertise for those star parties around the city, thus, the more I use the Mundo, the more the word will get out. But the bicycle is designed to work in another way. The project’s second goal is to demonstrate the utility of cycling, and thus I want people to see the Mundo everywhere, hauling children, 25 pound sacks of potatos, other bicyles. I am living nearly car free now, and the Yuba Mundo not only allows me to get around, haul what I need to survive, it is also gentle on the earth. And it keeps my healthy. So I can live longer, and do more astronomy outreach.

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by DougReilly on May 22, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bicycle Astronomy, cargo bicycles

Posted by DougReilly on May 22, 2013

http://bicycleastronomy.org/2013/05/22/the-yuba-mundo-in-bicycle-astronomy-livery/

The Most Astounding Fact

This is a wonderful video built around a response Neil DeGrasse Tyson had to an interview question: ”What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?”  There are lots of astonishing things about the universe, but this one is definitely among the top ten!

 

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by DougReilly on May 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in General Astronomy

Posted by DougReilly on May 8, 2013

http://bicycleastronomy.org/2013/05/08/the-most-astounding-fact/

They Might Be Science: Astronomy Songs (Part II)

Last post, I wrote about how I think the band They Might Be Giants is pretty great. Not only are they the darlings of adult nerds everywhere, they also make kicking kids’ music that doesn’t speak down to the little ones. Their album Here Comes Science is especially awesome, not only because they introduce scientific concepts, but because they actually model the process of scientific inquiry. And, because TMBG knew they were not exactly scientists, they hired a consultant to help them make sure they got it right.

One of the album’s songs, Why Does the Sun Shine?, was originally recorded by Tom Glazer in 1959′s Space Songs. Here is the refrain, taken almost verbatim from the Golden Guide to the Stars, a little book that served as many budding astronomer’s introductory text for decades. I used a version in the late 1980s with my first telescope, a miserable 60mm Edu-Science refractor:

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

It’s a catchy little ditty, with one problem. It’s wrong. The sun is not made up of incandescent (glowing) gas. The stuff churning around the sun is plasma. Plasma is like a gas (in some ways) but different in others. It’s a fourth state of matter, the oft-ignored sibling of solids, liquids and gases. It’s ionized, which means that the electrons are separated from the nuclei and are free-floating. Plasma conducts electricity, which is also why the sun produces such strong and turbulent magnetic fields, and why solar flares excite the ionosphere of the earth and make aurora. Plasma is the glowy part of a spark, the “stuff” lightning is made up of, the thing that is shining inside a neon sign buzzing incessantly out of your Replicant Hotel window.

But here’s the great part about this story and the thing that makes me love TMBG even more as a scientist than I did way back when as a nerd who was all off course and studying politics; when their album was being fact checked, the out of date info was discovered, and so they wrote a whole new song to correct it. It’s called Why Does the Sun Really Shine? And it is awesome too!

The sun is a miasma
Of incandescent plasma
The sun’s not simply made out of gas
No, no, no
The sun is a quagmire
It’s not made of fire
Forget what you’ve been told in the past(Plasma!) Electrons are free
(Plasma!) A fourth state of matter
Not gas, not liquid, not solid
Ooh!The sun is no red dwarf
I hope it never morphs
Into some supernova’d collapsed orb
Orb, orb, orb
The sun is a miasma
Of incandescent plasma
I forget what I was told by myself
Elf, elf, elf(Plasma!) Electrons are free
(Plasma!) A fourth state of matter
Not gas, not liquid, not solid(Plasma!) Forget that song
(Plasma!) They got it wrong
That thesis has been rendered invalid

Here’s the video:

 

What makes this song so cool is not just that it is a correction, but that it acknowledges the fact and underscores scientific method. The presence of both songs on the album make it a great teaching “object” for young people. The thing about science that sets it apart from most other systems of knowledge devised by humanity is that it changes according to the preponderance of the evidence. It is self-correcting and fact-checking is built in. That is not to say it is perfect. It’s still a flawed human endeavor. But it is remarkably useful. It is perhaps the most powerful problem-solving structure in human history. And now you’ve got two infectious songs to teach to your children that helps communicate the process and power of science.

Interestingly, I’m not sure if the 1959 song (and the Golden Guide which provided the offending passage) got it wrong, or if scientists at the time were mistaken about the nature of the sun. Plasma was discovered in 1879 and got its name in 1928. Should the original authors have known better in 1959?

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by DougReilly on May 2, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in media, reviews

Posted by DougReilly on May 2, 2013

http://bicycleastronomy.org/2013/05/02/they-might-be-science-astronomy-songs-part-ii/

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