On April 8, millions and millions of people across North America got to glimpse a total solar eclipse.[qh]
4月8日,北美数百万人目睹了一场日全食
If that brief foray into backyard astronomy left you hungry for more, never fear--we're here to feed your telescope fervor.[qh]
如果在后院对天文现象的短暂一瞥激起了你更多的探索欲,别担心--我们的节目就能满足你对望远镜观测的热情
This is Science Quickly, and I'm Clara Moskowitz.[qh]
这里是科学速递,我是克拉拉·莫斯科维茨
Here to talk to us about her own adventures in astrophotography--and offer tips and tricks for new amateur astronomers--is Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of New Hampshire.[qh]
在今天的节目里,新罕布什尔大学的物理学副教授昌达·普雷斯科德-温斯坦博士将向我们讲述她自己在天体摄影方面的经历,并为新入门的业余天文学家提供了一些建议和技巧
Hi, Chanda. Thanks so much for being here with us today.[qh]
你好,昌达
I'm excited to be here.[qh]
我很高兴能来到节目
So, you are a professional astrophysicist, but you also recently became an amateur astronomer.[qh]
你是一名专业的天体物理学家,但你最近也成为了一名业余天文学家
How does that work?[qh]
这是怎么回事?[qh]
I don't know if I fall in the category of astrophysicist in a very clear way.[qh]
我不知道自己是否明确属于天体物理学家的范畴
I do particle physics of dark matter, and I definitely work at the interface of the two.[qh]
我研究的是暗物质的粒子物理,我的工作也绝对属于这两个专业的交叉领域
But the interesting thing is, I have an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy and a master's degree in astronomy and a Phd in Physics.[qh]
但有趣的是,我有物理学和天文学的本科学位,天文学的硕士学位和物理学的博士学位
And none of that involves getting any training and actually working with the kind of telescope you might put in your backyard.[qh]
所有这些都不需要接受任何培训,也不需要使用你可能会放在后院里的那种望远镜
I think a lot of people would be really shocked to hear that.[qh]
我想很多人听到这个消息都会非常震惊
You know, now that I've started to get some facility with using a telescope--and specifically, I've been doing astrophotography--I actually think it's kind of weird that we're not, at some point, required to learn something about this.[qh]
你知道,现在我已经开始熟练地使用望远镜--具体地说,我一直在做天文摄影--其实我认为,我们不被要求学习这方面的知识,在某种程度上,还挺奇怪的
I was talking with my friend, Dr Sarah Tuttle--she's a professor of astronomy at University Of Washington and she's actually a real astronomer, like she actually builds telescopes for a living.[qh]
我在和朋友莎拉·塔特尔博士交谈的时候--她是华盛顿大学的天文学教授,她其实是一名真正的天文学家,她就是靠制造望远镜为生的
So, I was talking to her about this, and I was like, "isn't it kind of weird?" And she was like, "well, it's not really a skill set that most people need."[qh]
我跟她谈起这件事的时候,我说,“这是不是有点奇怪?”她说:“这个技能大多数人并不需要
But I do think it's strange, because it's part of what we do when we do outreach, right?[qh]
但我确实认为这很奇怪,因为它是推广服务的一部分,对吧?[qh]
And so, you'd think that you would want everyone with an astronomy degree to have facility with doing this kind of outreach.[qh]
所以,你会希望每个拥有天文学学位的人都能熟练进行这种推广
Because connecting with the public is so important for making sure our research has continued support.[qh]
因为与公众保持联系对确保我们的研究得到持续的支持是非常重要的
Right.[qh]
没错
Well, so, after so long, what drew you back to to looking through telescopes?[qh]
那过了这么久之后,是什么又让你重新选择用望远镜去观察呢?[qh]
So, as you know, I a few years ago published a book called "The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime and Dreams Deferred," and one of the themes in the book is the importance of people having access to a dark night sky.[qh]
所以,正如你所知道的,我几年前出版了一本书,名为《无序的宇宙:进入暗物质、时空和延迟的梦想之旅》,书中的一个主题是人们进入黑暗夜空的重要性
I think part of it was that I wanted to figure out the night sky that was local to me here on the New Hampshire Sea Coast.[qh]
我想部分原因是我想研究明白在新罕布什尔州当地的海岸夜空
It's easy to get so caught up in work that you actually--you're spending a lot of time talking about looking up, but you're not actually doing that looking up.[qh]
我们很容易陷入工作中,以至于实际上--我们会花大量时间谈论抬头望向夜空,但实际上自己却并没有这么做
And I wanted to share my experience of actually looking up.[qh]
我想和大家分享我真正仰望夜空的经历
Last week I visited the Tulane University Africana Studies department, and I showed my own astrophotography and talked to people about what it would mean to bring astrophotography into schools, and how accessible it is now, and how every school should have a small telescope that they can at least do solar observing with.[qh]
上周,我参观了杜兰大学非洲研究系,我展示了自己的天文摄影作品,并与人们谈论了将天文摄影带入学校意味着什么,现在它是多么触手可及,以及每所学校都应该配备一台小型望远镜,人们至少可以用它来进行太阳观测
So I think it it was really kind of living the values that I was out there talking to people about.[qh]
所以我认为,我的做法践行了我告诉人们的观念
I love that. And you talk about being pulled toward the dark sky, but dark skies are getting a bit lighter these days, is that right?[qh]
我喜欢这样
So, there's a huge problem with light pollution.[qh]
光污染确实是一个巨大的问题
Something I talk about in the book is, I grew up in Los Angeles next to the 10 freeway.[qh]
我在书中谈到的一点是,我在洛杉矶10号高速公路旁边长大
And we could see the moon and maybe Venus and not are white all.[qh]
我们可以看到月亮,也许还能看到金星,它们并不都是白色的
It's--especially in the 1980s, and in Los Angeles, which was like, super famous for being smoggy.[qh]
特别是在20世纪80年代的洛杉矶,那里以雾霾而闻名
And this affects our ability to do so many of the things that, you know, you pick up a book on how to do amateur astronomy, and it's like, "okay, find Polaris and then you can star hop.[qh]
这导致很多事情我们都没法做了,随手拿起一本关于如何当业余天文学爱好者的书,它会告诉你,“好,找到北极星,然后你就可以跳星了
You can look through diagrams of constellations and hop from one star to another."[qh]
你可以浏览星座图,从一颗星跳到另一颗星
But what if you can't see half the constellations?[qh]
但如果有一半星座你都看不到呢?[qh]
People who may even want to engage in those connections are having a more difficult time doing it, because we used to be able to just do that with our eyes--just navigate with our eyes--and light pollution makes that really difficult.[qh]
那些想要了解星星之间联系的人现在更难做到这一点,以前我们只需要肉眼就能做到--我们可以用眼睛导航--而现在的光污染大大增加了它的难度
Totally, and it's definitely an accessibility issue as you say, but you also mentioned that some of the technology lately is making astrophotography and observing more accessible.[qh]
是的,正如你所说,这绝对是个能否看见星星的问题,但你也提到了,最近的一些技术使天文摄影和观测变得更加容易
So how does that play out?[qh]
那么,这一切会如何发展呢?[qh]
One of the reasons I gravitated towards astrophotography was, one, because I actually wanted to share my results.[qh]
我被天文摄影吸引的原因之一是,第一,我真的想分享我的成果
And I think part of this is that we're in a culture now where you don't want to just see things.[qh]
部分原因是,在我们现在身处的文化中,你想要的不仅仅只是看到一些东西
You want a photo of what you saw so that you can share it on Instagram or Tiktok.[qh]
你想要拍下你看到的东西,把它分享在Instagram或TikTok上
The other piece of astrophotography is that instead of just taking a snapshot of the photons--so, the light particles as they're hitting your eye--with astrophotography you can actually layer multiple instances out of time, across time.[qh]
天文摄影吸引我的另一点是,它不仅仅是给光子拍摄快照--即撞击你眼睛的轻粒子--在天文摄影中,你其实可以跨越时间,叠加多个瞬间
So, for those who are listening who have had calculus, we're literally integrating over time, and so we're just adding all of the particles together.[qh]
所以,对那些听过微积分的听众来说,我们实际上是在随着时间的推移进行整合,我们只是把所有的粒子都加在一起
And that means that you can get a stronger signal than you might get just from looking at something with the naked eye.[qh]
这意味着你可以得到比用肉眼看到的更强的信号
And that means that, from my backyard, I can take images of phenomena that I can't see with my eyes.[qh]
这意味着,在我的后院,我可以拍摄到我用眼睛看不到的现象的图像
I actually got this really incredible image of the Rosette nebula.[qh]
其实,我拍到了一张令人惊叹的玫瑰星云图像
It's something I would never be able to see just from looking at the sky.[qh]
这是我永远无法用肉眼在天空中看到的东西