ENHS Nature Trails September 2005 Article 1

This month's speaker: Greg Bothun

If you've heard Dr. Greg Bothun speak at ENHS gatherings before, you know you're in for a dynamic evening. If you haven't previously heard him speak, you've got to come. His formal credentials, publications, and awards in the field of astronomy are extensive, but most importantly for us, he soars in his enthusiasm for education, giving both provocative and engaging programs.

*Here's his own statement on Educational Outreach: "I strongly believe it is the personal responsibility of the scientist to help educate the public to show that we live in a rational universe. The current level of science literacy in this country is alarmingly low and does not bode well for a competitive advantage in a technical world. Must of this is a result of the way that we teach and/or present science to the lay public. In general, we present this as a collection of "facts" learned about the physical world. We rarely, if ever, present it as a discovery process in which the science is built on experimental results . With the widespread appeal of the Internet and its associated Web browsers, scientists now have a good forum for placing their data and their explanations in a public forum for immediate access. [Greg was one of the first to see this potential and has been actively engaged in this interactive enterprise for the last four years. ed.] We need to present science in a much more innovative and engaging way than has ever been done before and the new technologies are helping to do just that."

Browsing the Internet for news about Dr. Bothun, I learned that his epithet, Dr. DarkMatter, helps to bring his intellect closer to others who freely exchange ideas, theories, and discoveries on the Web. He has collected a lot of high-quality astronomical images from various observatories, notably Pine Mountain Observatory and offers them online within his "Electronic Universe Project," described as "A Web server dedicated to public outreach and education by delivering real data to the public. This has been on the air since Feb 9, 1994 - making it one of the first such servers. The [project] now sees 20,000 - 40,000 accesses a day from around the world." http://zebu.uoregon.edu/

The amount of time and quality of scientific research that Dr. Bothun offers his students and the scientific community at large, belies his mention that "It seems my rate of enemy creation is increasing with time." Perhaps this refers to something only the insiders would know, or perhaps the followers of Creationist Science have discovered their vanquisher through his course at the UO titled: "Cosmology and the Origin of Life."

According to Dr. Bothun's UO Website under the Department of Physic, he earned his PhD at The University of Washington, and after working at other institutions, he settled in at The University of Oregon in 1990 in his field of specialization, Observational Astrophysics. Dr. DarkMatter's interests are primarily in galaxy evolution and large scale structure, although he is also quite committed to improving the quality of science education. "He serves as a UNIX system administrator and is involved in using the Network as an Educational Outreach instrument between the University and local area schools as well as the general public. He is the current director of the Pine Mountain Observatory, a facility that offers weekend public programs on the Electronic Universe in which the general public can use a 32-inch telescope with CCD to acquire images and take them home. Our Wide Field CCD Camera (cowcam) is now in place and taking data and we are doing several research and outreach projects with it."

Greg says that he has logged "approximately 2000 nights of Observing since 1980 on most of the major radio and optical telescopes in the world." He has extensive experience with Space Based instrumentation, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

* The information about Dr. Bothun above comes from the following websites:

http://www.physics.uoregon.edu/physics/faculty/bothun.html
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~dkmatter

With this cursory introduction, what area of enlightenment has Dr. Bothun selected for us Friday evening? He wrote this to ENHS President, David Wagner: "Traditionally, astronomy is viewed by the lay public as an endeavor done mostly with optical sensing techniques. However, virtually every breakthrough that we have made in our surveys and understanding of the Universe has occurred because instrumentation has opened up a new wavelength for which to detect objects in the Universe. In hindsight, it is now clear that the optical window provides a very limited view of the kinds of objects that exist in the Universe and the physics that powers those objects. This presentation will give an overview of how this process of opening up new wavelengths has lead to a better understanding of the Cosmos."

Cover Photos come from the above websites as well as http://pmo-sun.uoregon.edu

Get to know Dr. DarkMatter's world more intimately and check out the "Electronic Universe Project" mentioned earlier, or go to some "especially interesting" according to one Web source, photos, the "Messier object image collection" and "Planetary Nebulae Gallery," both easily accessed by Googling "greg bothun's image collection" or going directly to http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier//more/m-uo.html

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