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May 19, 2007 will be the 1st International Sidewalk Astronomy Night and all amateur astronomers are invited to join! They will have telescopes out on the street corners, in front of movie theaters, in state and national parks, in city centre parks ...anywhere there are crowds of people, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo to Kharkov.
The goal is to take 1000 scopes to the public on the same night worldwide, reaching hundreds of thousands of people and uniting amateur astronomers on different continents. We also hope many amateurs will try and like this different approach to astronomy outreach and will continue to hold sidewalk observing sessions throughout the year.
"IF THERE WERE A MILLION PEOPLE WITH TELESCOPES WILLING TO LET A FEW THOUSAND OTHER PEOPLE LOOK THROUGH THEM, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT EVERYONE WHO WALKS THIS EARTH, WITH EYES TO SEE, MIGHT SEE THE UNIVERSE." .
Just a few months ago, the French TV 5 showed a documentary entitled Sidewalk Astronomer, featuring John Dobson. The documentary began with an old man dressed in thick wooling walking across the brightly lit busy street in the USA holding a map of the moon and star chart. "The Moon", he used to shout aloud. "The Whole Moon & Nothing but the Moon!"... "Come see the Moon. Come see the Moon through the telescopes". And of course for free.
Folks used to look at him suspeciously but nevertheless peered through the scopes. Loud exclamations and gasps were the results. Folks could not believe that they could see the craters on the moon from the brightly list side. Thats JOHN DOBSON better known as side walk astronomers, with his cheap and unique scope better knowns as Dobsonnion telescopes.
Born in China September 14, 1915, he is often compared with Galileo. If the latter was the first to use it for astronomy, John made it popular and easy. Both were free thinkers and both were far ahead of their time.
Everybody is born curious, he used to say. Everybody wants to see this universe, understand this universe, They're just waiting for some one to present it to them, Everybody wants to understand this thing in his guts. No wonder John Dobson is called "Pied Piper of Astronomy," the "Star Monk," and the "MacGuyver of Astronomy."
In another documentary "UNIVERSE - The Cosmology Quest", John appears along with Sir Fred Hoyle, Dr. Halton C. Arp, Dr. Margaret Burbidge, Dr. Geoffrey Burbidge, Dr. Jayant Narlikar and many others. He has been to India a couple of time and met many of the amateur astronomers here.
The first International Side Walk Astronomy Day is being celebrated on 19th May, 2007 as a run up of the Internation Year of Atronomy in 2009.
John Dobson, 22nd October, 2004
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