Behind the Book-Stargazing: The People's Science

For journalist Timothy Ferris, astronomy is the original grass-roots science. Any ordinary citizen with just a star chart and a flashlight or an inexpensive homemade telescope can get actively involved with the night sky. "It's hard to do high-energy physics in your basement," says the author in a phone interview from his San Francisco office, "but you can do astronomy in your backyard."

Ferris's latest book, Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril (see review, this print issue, on p. 113), is both a journalistic account of the current revolution in amateur astronomy in which major discoveries by nonprofessionals are contributing to our understanding of the universe and a memoir of a lifelong passion that began in 1950s Key Biscayne, FL, when a nine-year-old Ferris would "trace the outlines of mighty Orion, Cygnus the Swan…and the almost frightening Scorpius."

The author of ten books, including the best-selling Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Ferris had never written about his personal history. "I think I shared Norman Mailer's sense that if you start out with your memoirs, you'll be in trouble with your second book, because what do you have left to write about? But observing the sky is such an intimate business and astronomy has been so important to me throughout my life that I thought it would be appropriate to have a certain subjectivity."

Although Ferris remains an ardent amateur stargazer (he built a small observatory in Sonoma County's wine country near his home), he never really gave much thought to becoming a professional astronomer when he was growing up. "I was genetically selected to be a writer," says Ferris. "My parents were both writers, and I see the world more in terms of language and quality than numbers." He first worked as reporter for the United Press International and the New York Post and as an editor for Rolling Stone before turning to writing critically acclaimed books that elegantly but clearly explain the complex science of astronomy to lay readers.

"I feel science is central to our culture in this country," notes the author. As part of a large-scale effort to encourage more people to get in touch with the beauty of the night sky, he is planning a PBS special and a web site based on Seeing in the Dark. Because the Internet has made it possible for amateurs to do deep-space astronomy using remote-control telescopes, Ferris is also seeking funding to make online telescope time available for free to people around the world in much the same way that teenagers can download music from the net. "The Internet," says Ferris, "literally makes a limitless universe accessible to anyone who has the gumption and interest to give it a try. There will be a revolution in science education because of this."

Acknowledging the role libraries have played in his own science education (the author was told that he is one of the top ten users of the University of California library system), Ferris sees a continuing part for libraries in promoting astronomy to the general public. Besides providing books on real observational astronomy, librarians should also consider creating events involving local astronomy clubs, many of which are quite happy to set up star parties with their own telescopes. "The amateur astronomy community is a very sharing one, " says Ferris. "There is a natural tendency to want to share the pleasures of the universe with other people."

Continuing on the same populist theme, Ferris's next project is a political book entitled Science and Liberty, in which he will explore the role science played in the founding and evolution of the democratic republics. "I will argue that in a period of 400 years the percentage of the world's population who lived in democracies went from one percent to 50 percent, and this was due to the advent of science."