What is the place of astronomy at a liberal arts college?
By Megan Pickett
Associate professor of physics
Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2007
I arrived at Lawrence University in the fall of 2006 and during that term I
taught our introduction to astronomy course, Physics 110. As an astrophysicist,
I have always enjoyed this class, because it offers a chance for students without
a science background to learn about and appreciate their home in the universe.
The course covers a lot of material not even dreamt of at the dawn of astronomy,
and these discoveries help make the class an exciting time of learning.
Yet, my favorite memories of the course will always be those moments in which
students did what astronomers have always done: look, and learn. When the students
were outside measuring angles with homemade cross-staffs, or using meter-sticks
to measure the height of the Sun during the term, or looking through a telescope
at the Andromeda Galaxy, or even creating simulated digital messages to be
sent into space, each was taking her or his place in a tradition of learning
that goes back thousands of years — a tradition that is well-suited to
a liberal arts education.
It has been said that astronomy is the oldest and noblest of the sciences.
Forgetting for the moment that it is usually an astronomer who says that, there
is a good deal of truth to the assertion, at least as far as astronomy’s
ancient lineage is concerned. We’ll never know who first gazed upon a
starry night sky and wondered.
Celestial mysteries viewed in darkness
I’ve thought about those nights, thousands of years in our past, and
how unimaginably different they must have been from our own. It’s not
so much all the advances that span the distance between my ancient counterparts
and me. More than anything else, it is the darkness. Anybody who has been camping
in the wilderness knows how dark the night sky can be. And yet, not completely
dark: On a moonless night, under the best sky conditions possible, the human
eye can see about 3,000 individual stars. That’s not all, either: five
planets, a few nebulae, star clusters, and four galaxies can be seen, depending
on where you live and when you look.
One of those galaxies is our own Milky Way, home to hundreds of billions of
stars, including our own sun. The Milky Way is a ghostly stripe across the
sky, sometimes just encircling the horizon, sometimes bisecting the starry
dome.
All these celestial mysteries were there to be seen if you walked far enough
from the group huddled around the fire, thousands of years ago. In the intervening
millennia, streetlights have replaced campfires, extinguishing from view all
but a handful of stars for most people. For better and for worse, we
live in a time in which most people have never seen the Milky Way.
Making sense of the night sky
Astronomy’s roots are based on understanding the night sky, and though
the tools have changed, astronomy is still at it, still trying to make sense
of it all. The first astronomers filled an unfamiliar sky with familiar objects:
animals, heroes, kings and queens, gods and goddesses, and the occasional farming
implement: the constellations. It’s clear to me that those first astronomers
had to be good storytellers with vivid imaginations. Anybody who has tried
to make sense of a star map knows this, too. No matter how many times I’ve
looked at it, you’ll never convince me that the five brightest stars
in the constellation Camelopardalis look anything like a giraffe.
Later generations of astronomers would attempt to explain not just the patterns
in the sky but also the patterns of movement: the seasonal change of stars,
the motions of the planets, why the Moon apparently changed shape during the
month, or when to expect the next eclipse. Ancient observatories took literally
monolithic proportions with structures like Stonehenge, Abu Simbel, Uaimh na
Greine, and the observatory at Mohenjo-daro. Much of the effort was devoted
to a simple, but vital, endeavor: telling time by using the stars as a giant
calendar.
Though not a science in the sense that a 21st-century scientist would recognize
it, the achievements of ancient Greek, Persian, Indian, and Chinese astronomers
mark a change in our relationship with the sky. The sky became something to
study in detail. Modern astronomy itself would appear for the first time much
later, with the work of Galileo and Newton and many others.
It has been nearly four centuries since Galileo first turned a telescope to
the sky (though only 15 years since the Vatican admitted that the resulting
trial for heresy was unjustified). Since then, telescopes have become larger
and better, and the human eye has been replaced first with photographic plates
and later electronic chips.
Observational astronomy has extended across the entire spectrum of light: from
radio observatories that rival or even surpass the ancient stone structures
in size to space-borne observatories that view the universe in infrared, ultraviolet,
and gamma-ray wavelengths. Computerization of astronomical research is pervasive
and not just in the control and operation of observatories.
Theoretical astronomy, once the province of pen, paper, and slide rule, has
also grown tremendously — especially in the past two decades with the
increasing availability of continually more powerful high-speed computing.
Despite all these advances, a simple idea remains at the heart of astronomy:
understanding our home in the universe. It is this idea and this effort that
make astronomy a perfect field of study for a liberal arts college.
Looking and learning at Lawrence
It may seem that astronomy would be a difficult area of study to maintain at
a liberal arts college, that it would be better suited to larger research universities
with hordes of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Yet, many liberal
arts colleges have included astronomy in their curricula and built observatories
on their campuses. In fact, astronomy was considered an integral part of a
student’s education, at least until the beginning of the 20th century.
There were practical aspects to an astronomical education — celestial
navigation in particular — but astronomy was also thought to create a
well-rounded student. These days, astronomy is a fully modern, quantitative
science, and it overlaps significantly with physics, chemistry, geology, mathematics,
computer science, and biology. As such, astronomy exposes students to a wide
selection of knowledge. In a time in which multidisciplinary study is cherished,
astronomy represents a wonderful opportunity for discovery. It has been my
experience, too, that there is a general and intrinsic interest in astronomy.
Everybody, it seems, brings some experience to the table — even if it
is just looking up in awe and amazement.
How can astronomy thrive at a liberal arts college in general and Lawrence
in particular? Part of the answer is surely the inherent interest of the subject
and the keen intellect and curiosity our students bring to the classroom. In
my short time here, I have been impressed and pleased with the willingness
of Lawrentians to take time out of their schedule just to stand outside and
look.
Two occasions last fall are illustrative: a remarkably comfortable November
afternoon watching a rare transit of Mercury across the Sun and a remarkably
uncomfortable December midnight observing session with students from my astronomy
class. In both instances, students, staff, faculty, and passersby took the
opportunity to look through a telescope — some for the first time. It
did not matter that the conditions weren’t perfect or that, as a result,
the images were blurry and faint (though the coffee and donuts surely didn’t
hurt). What mattered was that we were looking and learning, together — sometimes
for hours at a time.
Observation, theory, and research
Observations will always be at the heart of astronomy, and rightly so. Astrophysical
theory is also important: some would say (as a theoretical astrophysicist,
I would say) important in its own right, but it is also vital for understanding
the observations in the first place. Here we are lucky, for all that is needed
for astrophysical theory is access to a good computer and the time to work
a problem.
Much of my own research focuses on the formation of the solar system, which
occurred some five billion years ago, and is something that we obviously cannot
witness directly. Nonetheless, we can simulate the early solar system in a
computer. Access to major supercomputing centers off-campus certainly is helpful,
but the continuing advances in computer technology have meant that simulations
that required a year to complete a decade ago can be finished, on local machines,
in a month or less.
In fact, even campus computers can be configured to participate in calculations;
the SETI@Home Project, for example, has meant that millions of home computers
are engaged in SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
However it is configured, access to astrophysical simulations means that students
can be engaged in cutting-edge research on fundamental questions. These same
students also develop technical skills in programming and data analysis of
a more practical nature.
Research opportunities are important, but that is not the only contribution
astronomy can make to Lawrence. We already offer a general course for the non-science
major, and next year I will teach an upper-level topical course in astrophysics.
Given the natural appeal of the material, I am also interested in developing
a general education, team-taught course that brings together biological and
geological aspects to the questions of Origins, namely: How did the universe
form? How did the Earth form? What about Life?
One of my great hopes for the future of astronomy at Lawrence is the eventual
construction of a remote observatory that would be operated from campus or
would operate autonomously. Such remote/robotic telescopes are increasingly
being designed and built by other universities — from large research
university facilities like Indiana University’s “Roboscope” and “Spectrabot” to
liberal arts college telescopes like the Luther College Remote Observatory — and
are eminently possible for Lawrence University.
I believe the future of astronomy at Lawrence is promising and full of possibilities
for students and the community. We have come a long way from those cold nights
huddled by a fire surrounded by a dark sky filled with thousands of stars.
The skies aren’t as dark anymore, but my sense is that we should always
have some small part of the wonder and awe our ancestors must have had when
they looked, and learned.
For more about Professor Pickett's research, see Inside
Lawrence.