Qs from public star parties

The last few evenings, like many of you, I've been doing some public star
parties in our area, spurred by public interest in Mars. 2 nights ago was
fun - about 100 kids from a local school were all at a parking lot & we had
a few scopes set up.

Last night was more challenging. I did a viewing session with about 30
people, most of who were in a local home-schooling co-op. Nice people, great
kids - but in our area, most home-schooled kids are home-schooled because
the parents have a religious agenda that sez the Earth is only a few
thousand years old. Apparently, this holds for the universe as well.

Of course, so many things in Astronomy are in conflict with this - but it
was interesting hearing the questions and the side discussions. I'm listing
some of them here, not to poke fun at these people - but hey, they're out
there, and you need to be ready for them:

"How do we know for sure that our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in
diameter?"
"How do we know that Andromeda is 2 million light-years away?"
"I heard that Pluto is too small to be a planet"
"It takes just as much faith to believe in Science as it does to believe in
God"
"I heard we didn't really go to the Moon; we faked it"

I tried to answer the questions briefly - I wasn't there to challenge
anyone's worldview, just share a hobby I love.

My answers:

#s 1 and 2: Parallax only gets us out maybe a couple thousand lightyears.
Cephids and other standard candles do most of the rest.

#3: Since 'planet' is defined only by example, I think anyone who says this
is guilty of sloppy thinking: http://www.daveboll.com/planets/planet.html

#4: This wasn't asked directly to me, so I ignored it. But, if I were there
to challenge it, I would have said:
a) Science and God are not antithetical.
b) Science doesn't require "belief". Science only disproves, it doesn't
prove.
c) Science has a built-in error-correcting mechanism that religion lacks

#5: I gave a verbal pointer to www.badastronomy.com, and mentioned my top
two reasons we know we went.
1) We faked it... 6 times!?
2) In 1970, the (then) USSR did a sample return mission (Luna 16). The
rocks they brought back were unlike almost anything on Earth, and shared
some key similarities with the rocks that Apollo 11 brought back the
previous year. If there were any doubt that Apollo 11 was faked, the USSR
would have had a huge vested interest in announcing it to the world.

Beware of telescopes - they encourage thinking! 8)
-----------------------
Dave Boll
http://www.daveboll.com/

Then you have much smarter star party visitors than I get. Having done hundreds
of star parties at schools and a number of general public star parties, I can't
recall a time when somebody asked me to justify the estimated size of the
galaxy. Once I was quoting an age for the universe or globular clusters (I
forget which), and I threw out a number like 18 billion years, or something
similar. A religious type shot back, "In your *opinion*!" I also once had a
lady very seriously tell me about a large spaceship that had recently hovered
over her house in suburban Murrieta, California.

98% of the questions I get are these:
1) "How powerful is it?"
2) "How much did it cost?"
3) "How far can you see?"
4) In winter: "Is that the Little Dipper?"
5) "Does it have a motor to follow the stars? Wow!" (as though a clock drive is
advanced 21st Century technology).

Another frequent comment (not a question): "Wow! I've never seen a telescope
like this!" (looking at a standard Newtonian reflector).
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33° 27'59"N, 117° 05' 53"W