Galileo Scope

twitterjunky — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:17:22 +0000

Very early this year I heard about The International Year of Astronomy and their mission to put low cost and relatively high quality telescopes in the hands of school-aged children who might not otherwise have the opportunity to own a telescope. Specifically, The Galileoscope. The funding for this program/device comes from many of the usual sources and one source in which you and I can participate. When you or I purchase one of these scopes for ourselves we pay a bit more than the institutional price, there by subsidizing the institutional price. So, for twenty bucks I get a telescope that is better than any other telescope on the market in anything even approaching a similar price range, and so too does some aspiring astronomer kid. What a grand notion, right? I ordered one immediately.

Many many months later, I got my Galileoscope. Assembly was not a problem. Once night fell I mounted my Galileoscope to my camera tripod and headed out into the darkness. I found a suitably un-light-polluted field adjacent to the local observatory and aimed my scope at Jupiter. It took me, a very patient, non-jittery adult, nearly twenty minutes to target and focus my Galileoscope on Jupiter, one of the brightest objects in the sky. May I quote from The International Year of Astronomy’s website, “Nothing piques a child’s interest in astronomy as effectively as looking through a telescope she/he built herself/himself.” True enough but, only if the child can see something at the other end of the telescope she/he built herself/himself in relatively short order. Having said that, I must point out that once I was finally able to fuss my scope into a close enough semblance of compliance to actually see a crisp image of Jupiter, what I saw stole my breath. Lined up neatly on either side of the planet were the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. Spectacular! Worth every penny! Having said that, I fear that no child will enjoy using this telescope without talented adult supervision and plenty of distractions to entertain them while the adults fight with the scope.

temporarily agnostic on principal!

twitterjunky — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:41:39 +0000

I tend to refer to myself as an atheist in what, in this context, must be considered a flippant manner. When it comes down to what reason will necessarily lead us to conclude, I must admit that the data runs out prior to excluding the (deliberately?) nebulous notion of “god” as a possibility. It is also undeniable that the overwhelming majority of evidence supports the non-existence-of-god hypothesis. Given these facts, in an academic context, I tend to favor the theory of there-is-no-god in much the same way that I favor the theory of evolution, or the theory of gravity. In all three cases, all available evidence supports the theory, none of the available evidence contradicts the theory, but it remains unscientific to proclaim that no evidence ever will. So, to tie a tidy little Dawkinsian bow on it, I must remain “temporarily agnostic on principal.”

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Galileo Scope

temporarily agnostic on principal!