Greensboro Science Center: "To Boldly Go. . ." From Your Back Yard

Greensboro NC

27 May, 2022

6:13 PM

Description

Press release from the Greensboro Science Center: May 27, 2022 Artificial light pollution has robbed us of the beautiful star-filled night skies thatthrilled ancient stargazers. But the technology of our times has also given backat least as much as it's taken away. While peoples of the past could see manymore stars in their much darker, clearer skies than we can, they had no idea whatthey were looking at. But we do! That's an advantage anyone can grasp andhold onto, literally, in the palm of their hand. Smartphone apps, like the brilliant"Sky Guide," give us advantages that would make the Roman and Greek gods oftraditional sky lore green with envy. Standing in your yard and holding yourphone outstretched to the heavens, these apps overlay an Augmented Realityview of the contents of the sky you're seeing, so you can touch, identify and learnabout each constellation, star, planet, or satellite you might see. There's no betterway for a contemporary stargazer to get a grasp of what's up there than with anapp like this in hand. And if you want to get the kids in your household enthralled with star stories, whylimit them to the old lore of the past? For example, Orion was seen as a hunter-warrior locked in a life and death face-off with Taurus, the bull. But how muchmore exciting it is to tell our kids the TRUE tales of what we NOW know aboutthe real life and death struggles in the region of space bound within those sametwo constellations. In Orion lies a stellar nursery where hundreds of new starsare just now being born, while, in Taurus, the remnant of a dead star is stillliterally spinning in its grave thirty times a second and a thousand years afterblowing itself up as a supernova. Everywhere you turn, these are the kinds ofscientific star tales an app like "Sky Guide" gives you. With nothing more than a smartphone, your eyes, and, if you have them, asimple pair of binoculars, your backyard can become a launchpad for boldlygoing where you've never gone before. Written by Ron S. To learn more backyard stargazing tips, check out the Redfin post below. This press release was produced by the Greensboro Science Center. The views expressed here are the author's own.