Sky & Telescope - February 2022 - 7

Children and the Community
I just read " Fanning Sparks " (S&T: Sept.
2021, p. 84), in which Max Corneau
laments the lack of connection between
talented students and amateur astronomy
clubs. I was a space-loving, STEMoriented,
child-of-Apollo-and-Star-Trek
youth who went on to study aerospace
engineering in the early 1980s, but I
didn't know there was such a thing as
astronomy clubs until about 1996!
I wonder if anyone has created
any astronomy groups specifically for
children and youth. Kids go where their
friends are. While they might make
friends with adults in an amateur
astronomy club, they are more likely to
attend a group with friends their own
age that they already know. We could
start with models that work, or have
worked in the past, like scouting. Sky
Scouts! Local amateurs could lead weekly
or biweekly meetings with astronomy
lessons and projects for various ages
and levels. Kids could earn badges for
different skills and advance ranks based
on experience and projects completed. It
would be a lot of work, but I can hardly
imagine that someone somewhere isn't
already doing this. If someone is, it's
time to scale it up and export it!
David Douthett
Charles Town, West Virginia
I deeply empathize with Max Corneau's
sentiments. For decades, I have devoted
my professional life to providing opportunities
for high-achieving students to
study alongside professional scientists
and engineers from all disciplines. As
part of that work, each year around
25 students from Canberra, Australia,
keen on astronomy complete projects
through McNamara-Saunders Astronomical
Teaching Telescopes (MSATT),
a small teaching program and facility
I built at Mount Stromlo Observatory
(msatt.teamapp.com). Each student
partners with a professional or advanced
amateur astronomer or engineer for
eight months to complete their project
and produce a fully referenced report
on their findings. Anyone interested
in the model can contact me at
geoffrey.mcnamara@ed.act.edu.au.
Geoff McNamara
Canberra, Australia
FOR THE RECORD
* In " Capturing Stellar 'Voids' "
(S&T: Dec. 2021, p. 60), IC 434 was mistakenly
listed as IC 404.
* The official name of the dark nebula between
NGC 7000 and IC 5070 and IC 5067
is LDN 935 (S&T: Dec. 2021, p. 63).
* The bright star-like object identified in
the image on page 29 of the September
2021 issue as the Southeastern Knot is the
variable star UX Cygni.
SUBMISSIONS: Write to Sky & Telescope, One Alewife Center, Suite 300B, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA or email:
letters@skyandtelescope.org. Please limit your comments to 250 words; letters may be edited for brevity and clarity.
75, 50 & 25 YEARS AGO by Roger W. Sinnott
1947
1972
º February 1947
Airborne Observatories " The
aerial guns of the Army's B-29
bombers are being replaced by
Geiger counters, cloud chambers,
and other scientific equipment at
the Naval Ordnance Test Station at
Inyokern, Cal., thus converting the
planes into airborne cosmic-ray
laboratories. Under the direction
of Dr. Carl D. Anderson, California
Institute of Technology, discoverer
of the positron, the planes will collect
data from altitudes up to 40,000
feet, according to Science Service. "
Planes and balloons had made
1997
single flights for astronomy before,
but the idea of dedicated airborne
observatories was taking hold.
º February 1972
Prehistoric Impact " About five
degrees north of the Arctic Circle,
near longitude 110° east in the
Khatanga river basin, there is a
round depression about 45 miles
in diameter. The Popigay and
other lesser rivers flow through the
depression, which has usually been
regarded as the result of a collapse
some 100 million years ago . . . But
Soviet scientists who explored this
feature during the summer of 1970
believe it was formed by the impact
of a large extraterrestrial object
about 30 million years ago.
" If so, the Popigay depression is
an astrobleme. This term, introduced
by the American geologist R.
S. Dietz in 1960 to signify an ancient
meteorite-impact structure, is from
Greek roots meaning 'star wound.' "
º February 1997
Lunar Water " On December 3rd
a scientific press conference was
held in an unlikely setting - a Pentagon
briefing room - to announce
something equally unlikely. At issue
was the Clementine spacecraft's
1994 study of the Moon. 'We think
we have found ice,' intoned Paul
D. Spudis (Lunar and Planetary
Institute). 'We are not positive, but
we see signals consistent with ice
and we think it's there.' . . .
" Clementine was designed for
imaging and altimetry, not prospecting
for water. But early in its [lunar
run colleague Stewart] Nozette
hatched another scheme. He proposed
using the craft's transmitter
to 'shine' radio waves into the perpetually
darkened floors of craters
at the Moon's poles. The reflected
energy, if detected on Earth, might
settle the debate over whether
patches of ice lie hidden there. . . .
" 'We lucked out immensely,'
Nozette says. Not only did the echo
prove stronger than expected,
but the all-important polarization
ratio also showed a modest peak
precisely when the shadowed areas
were within the radio beam. "
Despite this optimism, Clementine
hadn't proved the case for
water on the Moon. That came
in 2008, when the impact probe
from India's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter
detected water ice in the crater
Shackleton. In 2020, scientists using
NASA's airborne SOFIA telescope
announced they'd found spectral
features of water in sunlit areas.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * FEBRUARY 2022
7

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Sky & Telescope - February 2022

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