It's as popular a summer pastime as playing baseball, eating Popsicles and going swimming. In fact, most people do it so frequently that on some black, perfect nights they do it unconsciously: stargazing. However, stargazing frequently stimulates questions such as, "What causes the aurora borealis?" Or, better yet, "What is the aurora borealis?"
Now, with a newly redesigned Cornell Department of Astronomy web site, "Ask an Astronomer," stargazers can have their questions answered by real astronomers.
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| Astronomy graduate-student team members for the "Ask an Astronomer" web site line up in front of the Space Sciences Building, Sept. 18. They are, from left: David Rothstein, Kristine Spekkens, Karen Masters, Britt Scharringhausen, Lynn Carter, Valerio Carruba and Matija Cuk. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography |
The web site was created in 1997 by astronomy department Ph.D. candidate Dave Kornreich, now an assistant professor of physics and physical science at Humboldt State University. The new site is maintained, and all questions answered, by a group of six astronomy graduate students who have dubbed themselves "the curious team." Team members contributed their time over six months to complete the site's makeover.
"The site needed better organization. It was just a blurb and an archive of previously asked and answered questions," said team member Britt Scharringhausen, who helped create the original site. A specialist on the rings of Saturn, Scharringhausen is a Ph.D. candidate in the astronomy department.
The redesigned "Ask an Astronomer" site is not only much easier to navigate than the original, but also carries new informational sections, sorted by topic, that include extensive information on astronomy and astrophysics.
"Sorting through the huge numbers of pages ... for a specific piece of information can be a daunting task for a non-specialist," explained team member Kristine Spekkens, a galaxy specialist who also is an astronomy Ph.D. candidate.
The home page of "Ask an Astronomer," which has a link on Yahoo!, has about 30,000 visitors a year, and it gets up to 70 questions a week. Prior to its redesign, the site didn't have a web counter, and so there was no way of knowing the number of hits.
The aim of the site, Spekkens said, is to provide "basic, trustworthy, nontechnical information about various topics." One result of the students' expertly answered questions is that the site has become increasingly popular among people of all ages and backgrounds around the world as a place to get reliable information about the universe. Indeed, more people are visiting the site simply to view the pages than to ask questions. "People seem actually to read the previously answered questions, so we don't have to answer as many duplicate questions," said Scharringhausen.
Questions range all over the cosmos, from "How do we know the age of the universe and the Earth?" (The universe from background radiation, a remnant of the "big bang"; the Earth from radioactive decay measured in rocks and meteorites) to "Why aren't there any green stars?" (There are; the sun is actually a yellow-green star.) But questions can be far more down to earth, from "What kinds of jobs do astronomers do?" (research, publishing papers and teaching) to "How much money do astronomers make?" (The average for a physics Ph.D. was about $78,000 a year in 2000). The team even has to field such practical questions as how to build a rocket (Buy a kit).
Even team members are learning from the site. Karen Masters, a Ph.D. candidate from England, said she has "learned more about web-site development and the use of databases." She is now considering such improvements as changes to the explanation pages and adding sub-topics to improve navigation of the question archive. Spekkens finds that questions "often force me to consider an aspect of astronomy that I have little experience with."
Scharringhausen's experiences, on the other hand, might make her feel she is in an episode of "The X-Files" because she finds herself dealing with questions about astrology, numerology and conspiracy theories, such as "Did astronauts really go to the moon, or is it a hoax?" Her answer -- "We have rocks and soil samples from the moon that have been analyzed by several independent laboratories" -- reveals her belief that "the scientific method offers better answers to many of these questions."
"The X-Files'" Fox Mulder should know that the truth is out there -- just ask an astronomer.
To post a question or visit "Ask an Astronomer," go to http://curious.astro.cornell.edu.
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