Re: best questions at star parties?
- From: "Stu" <brutnospamer@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 01:28:40 GMT
"Brian Tung" <brian@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e90lcm$80p$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Before people get offended, I've got to emphasize that this post was not
consciously inspired by any question asked recently on SAA.
Well, you all know what the story is. You set up your telescope at your
club's public star party, and before you can get Albireo centered in the
field of view, someone has come up and asked you The Dumb Question of
the Night. The Dumb Question of the Night is that question that makes
you want to put your telescope back in your car and drive home and
observe in peace. It might be about anything at all, but after you've
been asked The Dumb Question of the Night, you want to smack someone.
But I don't want to ask about The--err, DQN. I'm wondering about those
wonderful questions, the ones you get asked when you *think* the DQN is
coming, the ones that make you think, or get you excited about telling
folks about what you're seeing. These, too, might be about anything:
they might be about the physics of what you're looking at, or maybe the
history of its discovery and observation, its significance in cultural
affairs, or what kind of telescope you've made, or how you find objects
in the sky.
One night, the BQN--Best Question of the Night--was a boy who, after
taking a look at Saturn in the eyepiece and giving the usual, "Wow, you
can see the rings! They're small, though. But you can see the rings!"
offered the following question:
"Where did the rings come from?"
Now, that is a Grade AA question, especially for a child, because it
means that he's figured out the possibility that Saturn didn't always
have to have rings. Even we often think of the rings as being intrinsic
to Saturn, but of course they aren't. OK, so how did they come into
being? Our best guess is that tidal forces either broke up a satellite,
or prevented one from forming--well and good, now how do you explain
that to a 10-year-old, even a bright one, without overwhelming him with
inverse cube laws and Roche limits? How do you explain how gravity can
actually pull things apart, in 10-year-old terms?
That's one of mine. Everyone will have different BQNs, because we don't
all have the same pet interests. Mine are physics and optics, so my
BQNs tend to fall along those lines, but ATMers will have different
ones, and planetary specialists will have others, and so on.
So, what are some of your Best Questions of the Night?
--
Brian Tung <brian@xxxxxxx>
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html
Sorry I forgot to say that I have not had one intelligent question asked
yet, other than the usual, how far, how big, what is it ect...
Stu. H.
.
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