Astronomy, Public Communication of

The public communication of astronomy shares many features with that of other scientific disciplines: It has been done both by scientists and others; over time, the audiences have grown, thanks to material and social factors, and now include women, children, and most social classes; and all the media available have always been used. However, it is different in at least two important ways. The subject of stars, planets, and comets has been a part of popular culture from the very start. Space and time have always sparked our imagination and inspired our fears and admiration. And unlike, say, neutrinos or mitochondria, stars and galaxies are a part of nature that can still be studied by nonprofessionals. So today amateurs can participate in the production of new knowledge about the universe.

Planets and stars have always been a part of culture, even before astronomy itself existed. Apart from their obvious use for the calculation of calendars, they have been included in everything from cosmogonies to folk tales. Probably because they are the largest things we see in the sky and their movements are regular, the sun and the moon were worshipped by ancient cultures such as the Egyptian and the Aztec. And the positions of all the heavenly bodies were (and still are) considered to have an effect on our lives. Comets, on the other hand, are both more spectacular and more unpredictable and have generally been considered omens of ill fate.

As we have learned more about the universe, the subject of the cosmos has not disappeared, only adapted to each local context. Since the end of the 19th century great sagas are told in science fiction, where heroes and villains of all sizes and shapes fight among galaxies and black holes using the wildest technology imaginable. Today, our fears of the unknown remain and have been displaced from comets to unidentified flying objects. Both knowledge and questions about the cosmos have also inspired works in all the forms of high culture such as painting and music. In poetry, we find great examples, such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson—who had many scientist friends—wondering about formation of planets, or John Updike—who read a lot about science on his own—joking about the “attitudes” of neutrinos.

We could say that public communication of astronomy appeared with the first astronomer, for they have always been in contact with the general public. But nonastronomers have also been successful in this endeavor. One of the first, and still one of the best, examples of this case is Conversations[Page 70]on the Plurality of Worlds, a delightful book written toward the end of the 17th century by the French poet Bernard de Fontenelle. This agile dialogue between a lady and a gentleman of the court is divided into six nights in which the sun, the moon, the planets, and their order and movements are discussed. Through this book, the lay reader of the time became aware of Nicolaus Copernicus's heliocentric theory and especially of the Cartesian way of understanding the world. The piece probably became a best seller because it found the right balance between form and content: Fontenelle packaged pretty heavy science into the very friendly form of courtly culture. A good example of a similarly best-selling author of our day who is not a professional scientist is Timothy Ferris, whose 2002 book, Seeing in the Dark, documents the important role of amateur astronomers.

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