Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome everyone. I'm Mike Simmons, the founder of Astronomy for Equity. And today on the podcast we have Susan Moravana and Daniel Chu Owen of the Traveling Telescope, an amazing couple. Susan is the president of the ASTRO of the African Planetarium association, serves on the board of the International Planetarium Society and World Space Week, and was a United Nations Space for Women Mentor in 2020. She's been featured on CNN, African Voices, BBC and other local and international media platforms. Daniel Chu Owen is the Chief Technical Director of the Traveling Telescope. He's originally from the United Kingdom where he studied film and video production and he's also a music producer, a performer, a talented photographer and we'll see some of his work here and an artist and he contributes to the development of the creative content for the company, including film, music and lots of photographs. Susan and Chu now live in Nairobi, Kenya as husband and wife. A marriage truly made in the heavens. So welcome Susan and Chu. And I just see I brought you on, just making you laugh first or something. So.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Hello. Yeah, nice to be with you, Mike.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Lovely to be with you, Mike. Thanks for inviting us to join me today.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Well, it's, it's great to see you guys.
Susan, we, we've known each other for quite some time now, having met at various places where our paths cross. And to both of you guys, I, I see I'm always having people send me articles and say, oh, look at what these people do are doing in Africa. I'm saying, yeah, yeah, I know, I've seen them. They keep popping up in the news constantly. So you're doing fabulous stuff there. And just give us a little bit of background how you got involved in astronomy in the first place. You had different paths to this and ended up very much together here. And so I just give us a quick background of how you ended up in this position in astronomy as a profession.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Thanks, Mike.
I often say I wish I had the story of always looking up in the sky and wanting to find out more about it as a young girl. But that's not what happened. I was in my 20s and I met a group of grad students who are traveling across Kenya teaching science. And they had a telescope. And I got a chance to look through the telescope and say Saturn.
And it was just a life changing moment for me, seeing that planet with rings. And I wanted to share that experience with as many people as I could, family and friends, but most importantly school kids. Because I think at that point, looking at Saturn, I was reminded of my school days and I wished that that's how I had experienced Saturn learning about the planets or that's how my education was. So that was in 2002, around the time. And ever since then, I really wanted to spread the knowledge of science through astronomy. And there are other things that came about, but that was the very first thing that sparked my interest in astronomy. Over to you too.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Okay. Well, I mean, I don't have any of the formal background. My background originally was in the arts and so I got into music first and then film photography. But I did always have a background interest in the night sky. And my dad was very interested in sciences and things and Hubble. When I was young, I remember seeing the National Geographic with amazing Hubble. I think it was the Pillars of Creation on the. On the front cover or something. Wow, this stuff's interesting. Anyway, back to the guitar.
So it was much later in life when I got ill and I was recovering at my mom's place in Dorset, which has got very dark skies for the uk, you know, we've got much better skies, really, can you. But for the uk, it's not bad.
And I was like, I just was going down a hole and I was like, I needed something to focus on and I bought a telescope. And similar to Susie, you start to see little glimpses of things. And I had a terrible telescope, so I could, you know, it wasn't tracking, it wasn't particularly stable, but I could just about make out craters on the moon. And I was like, hang on, this is, this is interesting stuff here. And then you see the moons of Jupiter and a hint of the rings of Saturn with that old rubbish telescope. And I eventually upgraded and got more interested in the photography elements of astronomy and also trying to find out what was going on there. And then you start to realize, hang on, why was I not told this at school? We are humans on a planet spinning through space and we don't talk about that in school. I mean, most of our school is in the daytime, so we don't have lessons under the stars at night. I think. Yeah, I got. I got to think, well, we need to share what these views that we're seeing here are. So, yeah, I sort of started the idea of traveling around with a telescope and showing people stuff. And then within a few months of starting, like, I think Facebook page, there was this eclipse I'd heard about coming up in Kenya. And so I got in touch with someone called Mike Simmons and he said, oh, yeah, you might be able to join up with a group, group, I think, that are going to see an eclipse. Someone called Susan is organizing it and, and then we met under a planetary alignment.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Mike would never have known.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Thank you, Mike.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Well, I guess you never know. I never really thought about that. But yeah, I guess that's what happened. So.
Yeah, and I do remember that. And you were going to film it and so on, and, and Susie and I had known each other for a while, but she's the go to person in, in Kenya. I mean, she always has been now the both of you. So.
Yeah, that's, that's great. So. And you know, you mentioned a few things here, too, that you really came into astronomy from the art side in a way. And that's, that's a really important part of it, too. Astronomy is part of everything, all of our arts, our culture and everything else.
And for Susan, you illustrate one of the things that I tell people all the time, that you're changing lives when you do this. You're giving people a first look through a telescope, and they have the realization that, wait a minute, we're people on a planet. Why is this a big secret? Why haven't they been teaching us this? And it has an enormous impact. So, you know, this podcast is about the importance of, of astronomy. I don't have to ask about that because you guys are just living illustrations of it with all the work that you do. So. And you have gone from doing a little bit of outreach to having a full fledged company that is doing great work with planetariums, both mobile and fixed and many other things. And, you know, it's. Let's take a look at some of the things that have, that you guys have been up to.
And I know these come from different events, and some of them are old and some of them new. It doesn't really make any difference because the impact on the people that matters. But here you are someplace. Looks like not a really dark, dark sky, but out in the open someplace showing people objects in the sky. And what you're going to look at.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Yeah, this is actually in Maasai Mara. So just unfortunately, in this little area we were in, there were a few lights around, but if you were to go, you know, another couple of kilometers away from, you know, some of these, you know, what they often call security lights, primarily for animals. You know, they sort of, they want to, they want to know what's going on there. But yeah, beautiful skies there. We had a little bit of cloud. I think you can see a bit of cloud around. But obviously Suzy's demonstrating something with her lightsaber.
[00:08:57] Speaker C: Yes. So when we first started together, Doing traveling telescope, we were not sure what the interest would be, especially in Kenya and in school schools. And we really wanted to share what we love with school children because we thought it would be a nice way to get them excited about education and science and, you know, just generally their life and their place in our planet and the universe. So we do visit schools like this one in rural and in urban areas. And before COVID we have gone to schools where we've had 500 children wait around this one telescope to look through. And then the laser pointer has.
I don't know, the students react to it. It's just like, oh, wow, what's that really cool thing? And I think the cool thing is there's a lot of interest questions and answers. And I think one of the photos we really like at the beginning of our traveling telescope journey, even before we registered it went to a school and we had a smaller telescope and there were more than a thousand kids waiting to look through that telescope. And so it was without us knowing our needs analysis, we got to learn that there was a community of children who are very interested. It doesn't matter where we go to, the interest is really there. And we often leave a place with a unique experience.
So we really, really value the fact that we're able to go into these schools. We know the teachers are always very welcoming because it's a unique experience for them and the kids. And we hope that. I truly hope that at least once in a lifetime, every child would have a chance to have a lesson under the night sky, whether with the aid of telescopes or not. But there's so much room for discovery out there with the sky.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. John Dobson used to say, you know, after he first looked through a telescope, he said, wow, everybody's got to see this. And. And that was how he devoted the rest of his life. And he said, if we had a million telescopes in the right places, everybody on the planet could take a look through a telescope. Which is true.
Unfortunately, we can't do that and they aren't distributed evenly. But that's what we're doing in astronomy for equity and definitely what you are doing there, bringing them where they're needed. And here's an example of one of them in use. Not a little one. A large Dobsonian.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yes, yes. It's a 12 inch tracking. It's one of these tracking Dobsonian. So you can sort of move it around and it's keeps. It sort of knows where it is. It's got these encoders on it. So very useful. For. Especially when we have big numbers, you know, having that tracking, you know, counteracting the rotation of the Earth, it just means that we're able to, you know, to. If we had to get the image back with every person, it just, you know, it would end up taking forever.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: It takes forever. Yeah, yeah. Something we've all faced doing outreach, that you got to keep it going. And then you get people who will come up and say, I don't see anything. And you realize the last six people didn't see anything, but they didn't see anything.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Actually, it happened recently that we were doing a thing where we were expecting, or we were told to expect maybe 30, 40 people, ended up being more than 200. So we were a little bit underprepared for that one. But I always don't know if I should. But I got the young kids. We had kids and their parents for this particular event. And I was like, okay, kids, you're gonna get to look first. And it was Jupiter. And at the moment, Jupiter's getting a bit lower in our western horizon. And so all the kids got pretty good views. By the time the parents were looking, it had become very wobbly, and they were just like, is that what they've been looking at? And it makes such a difference, you know, the altitude of. I'm sure, you know, altitude of a planet.
If it's. If it's nice and high up and at the equator, we get the benefit of. Sometimes these things are directly above your head because we're at the equator. So, you know, you don't get views as good anywhere else. I don't think on the planet sometimes. Obviously, then when it starts to set or, you know, early evening, then you still struggle.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: But isn't it interesting that when you plan in astronomical event like this and the number of people that come is not what the estimate was, it's never fewer people. It's always way more people.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: You know, people don't. Just don't say, nah, I think I'll forget it. You know, they just, oh, you're doing what? I'm going with you. So. And. And this is why. Check that out.
Beautiful shot.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: Yeah. This is again, at a school in Maasai Mara.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: No, this one's outside. Ambassador, Another one of the national parks. Can you get these? Amazing. Like this is.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. And you can see the moon there in his eye as well. It's like this thing. I mean, it's really bright when you see the moon, especially if it's a, you know, quite a fully lit moon, it's incredibly bright. I sometimes do put reducers in there these days. I don't think I did at this particular time.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So some of the schools we go to are really, really under equipped.
You know, it is so bad that they don't have proper sanitation.
And you know, the basic things that we take, we don't. We don't, you know, acknowledge that because we have them. We just, you know, don't notice. But you go to these places and children like these friends, they are so keen to get in. Everything you're telling them, like, they're so attentive. It's like, this is the only chance I have.
And I remember and the thing with a school like this, it's in one of the richest places in Kenya in terms of, you know, tourist attraction and everything, and yet it's very, very poor and it's rich in terms of the sky, it's got beautifully dark skies and it was just a fantastic experience being there with the children at the school were there during the day and then we spent the night and we took another program of ours after, I think.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: I think we looked at the sun as well with this group, didn't we?
[00:15:53] Speaker C: Yes, we did, yeah.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: So sometimes we do do sort of daytime things. I mean, it's really hot for a long period.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: So.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: In Kenya, in Kenya, the formal language is English and the national language is Swahili. And some of the schools like these ones, the children even struggle speaking Swahili. So it's that remote and that removed from, you know, the schools in the city. And it's so rewarding to go and spend time with children like this one because they really value your time and anything you have to offer because they hardly get that experience, very few people.
And I think this photo is one of those nice ones because you kind of see that.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: You see a bit of a wow. It's like. It's not a verbal wow, it's like a.
And you do get some great expressions. I mean, obviously I love to record all expressions because if we get amazing stuff, some swear words come up quite often as well.
[00:16:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: This one was actually in Turkana and it's funny because obviously Suzy's a Kenyan and she speaks Swahili and a bit of her local language as well, but not really. But this one, this one was near the border with Ethiopia, so it was in Turkana again, where we'd actually originally gone for this eclipse trip. But this was another event and she wasn't able to Speak to the kids.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: And the funny thing about this trip was I was told the children here do not speak.
And I was like, okay. And when we got to the school, it was like, culture shock for me. It's again in Kenya, but it's so removed from even the. Some of the first schools we've gone to. I really like this photo because, yes, we have the big telescope. Yes, we have all that, but they're looking up at the sky. You know, it's. It's like the telescope is a gateway to discovery for these children. And it was such a magical night for us. Really beautiful sky. We had some of the professors from University of Nairobi with us. And the expression of students, children, and the professors are similar when they look through. And so Saturn. And it's just such a unifying thing to see. And it's very unifying when you see this expression, to realize that what we're doing can really remind us irrespective of where we come from.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's interesting, too, that in schools like this, they love the opportunity because they don't have that. And they may not have any science facilities, may not have teachers who really know the science. So this is not only an introduction to science, but while they don't have the chem lab and biolab and physics lab and all, they have a better astronomy lab than most of us do, because they're out in the middle of nowhere without the lights, and they've got everything up above them.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Yes, very true.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: This is something that we always notice. You know, there's. Every culture has got their own words for things in the sky, and everyone's got words for the sun, the moon, and the stars, and a lot of them have the planets as well. And we always talk about how time is such an important concept in astronomy because, you know, we define the year by the orbit of the Earth and everything, and then the month, which in Old English was moons. I'm sure you know all about this, but in Kiswahili, the word for moon is muzi, and it's the same word for month. So it's one of those things where people. You sort of tell people that, and they sometimes haven't put those two things together, if at all. And they're like, oh, yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: And it's really nice seeing those connections.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: With language, particularly when people reach out to us and want to know what we do. We know that giving views through the telescope is a key thing. But what's more important is the whole storytelling element. So we offer our school Students or tourists which will come to a guided tour of the night sky. And we are, of course, giving them information, but trying to also have this conversation with them, to learn the language, to learn how the sky, what it means to them and things like that. And sometimes you also get local.
We often get local adults in this area who are very in touch with stories like this one, and they're happy to share their stories, which should not be better documenting because they are immersed in collecting or trying to share the sky.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Yeah, wonderful. It's. Yeah, it's very interesting. The cultures, the cultural differences and everything are really fascinating. Yeah, there's some cultures are so in tune with.
With the night sky, and our Western culture has kind of lost that. So it's a wonderful mix.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah. We often sort of talk about how, you know, the astronauts that have been up into space look back at the Earth and they see, you know, there's no borders and there's, you know, this is one place that we all come from. And in a way, you. Us using our telescopes and doing astronomy outreach as you do as well, it's like that's as close as many people will ever come to sort of getting that overview effect. You know, you can see the whole of the Moon or the whole of Saturn or Jupiter, whatever it is in your telescope, and you're aware that there's other balls spinning around out there and things are going around them and they have craters. You know, with the Moon, you can sort of see that it's. It's another world. And that. I don't know. Our hope is that through that, through that work that we're doing, we can all join up a little bit better than we currently are. Seem to be falling apart as a society in some ways. So hopefully astronomy could be the glue. Glues is all back together.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Well, it's, you know, you're touching on what I've been doing forever in my own work there. So in connecting people through astronomy and for. For many years now, since I started doing international things. And also you mentioned the overview effect, and I'm involved in that and the Overview Institute with Frank White and so on.
And I. I always talk about it and have talked to astronauts about it as astronomy being the overview effect for the rest of us who aren't going to make it into space. Although the way things are going now, I haven't given up completely yet. You guys have a better shot at it than I do, but it is. And when we look from different places, we see how we're on this globe where we're seeing the same things from different places around. And. Yeah, so I had to throw that in that I, I 100 agree with you there. So.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah, we're kindred spirits. I believe Susie met Frank White.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: Not met him. It was a virtual training.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Ah, yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: So he was one of the participants. He probably would remember.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Oh, how can he forget you?
[00:23:35] Speaker A: So, so that's, that's fabulous. And we are kindred spirits. And that's the whole point. We are kindred spirits all around the world. And that's what I've always found. And that's one of the points of this podcast. I mean, we're showing people what's happening everywhere.
And as we travel around and we meet people doing astronomy in other places, it doesn't matter what the other differences are. What we're doing is exactly the same thing. Just doing it in different places with people that look different, but otherwise it's the same thing. So. And.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, sorry, go ahead, go ahead. Well, I was just going to mention it keeps coming up recently, but, you know, the Pleiades is, I'm sure most of the people who are watching will know, but it's an open star cluster and it's relatively young stars, but it's this very, very recognizable patch. If you've got not very good eyes, it's a fuzzy blur of like, kind of almost nebulous, but it's, you know, but every culture in the whole world has got something that they've noticed that, and it differentiates that from anything else. You know, when me and Suzy got together, there was a Japanese lady on the trip to Takano, and she was telling us about how in Japanese, that's Subaru. And of course, lots of 4x4 people over here. And so we have a lot of Subaru cards. And so everyone's got the logo on there. We're always like, ah, there's the connection. I think it's Mao in Chinese. And in India, you've got Diwali is connected with when that starts to rise. And then, and I'm sure, and I don't know about your Native American stories, but in Kenya we also have Loisaba. So the Samburu people in northern Kenya have, you know, a story associated with that. You know, we haven't necessarily got the details of it, but it's something that's notable. All cultures all around the world seem to have take that one out.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm sure a lot of people think the Subaru telescope was made by a car company, but it's not really because of that. It's Right.
So. And speaking of different, different people that we all see, that you guys see. I mean, so the difference here is that these Maasai, I believe, are doing exactly the same thing, but their culture is different, they look different, but otherwise the practice of astronomy is the same.
And I think we have one here a little later in the evening and enjoying the incredible Kenyan night sky.
Now, you told me that this is actually double exposure, so that the Elvis.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: It's very hard to get, you know, to get decent images of that particular central band of the Milky Way, you've got to do very long exposures.
And if you do that at the same time as having any wildlife where there are some elephants behind the telescope there, that's not. I mean, that. That's the sort of the bottom part is one image and the other one is another image. But they were, you know, from the same zone and area. So it's not a single exposure, but it sort of tells a lot of the story. I mean, we don't get elephants and giraffes without stars. And you don't understand that process without the astronomy understanding or what our previous generations of astronomers have enlightened us about. So I feel a real deep connection. Whenever we talk about aliens often come up in our nights. Kids always want to know about aliens. And so we always end up talking about life on Earth. And elephants will come up as being the biggest ones, Suzy's favorites as well, my favorite animal.
[00:27:30] Speaker C: Also. When we met and we decided we wanted to set up the traveling telescope, it was very important for us to figure out how we wanted it to be sustainable. And we both decided we wanted to set it up as a social enterprise, social impact company, because we both came from a place where we had a passion for sharing this knowledge with school kids and hopefully seeing the long term, the impact it could have changed in the economy or the mindsets of young people.
But then we also did not want to entirely rely on funding. And so we both agreed, we thought there was an opportunity there to, you know, engage a wider audience and see if you could charge them. And at the same time, most important was to get buy in from Kenyans. So do it in a way that we felt that Kenyans wanted to be part of this experience. And we had the idea. We first obviously started with the schools and then with time, we got an inquiry one year in advance for a booking first, what you call it, with a lodge for guests who are coming to stay for a few days. And we did it and it was a success. And that's how we started the astro tourism or the tourism side of our business. So since then we've gone to quite a number of lodges, worked with quite a number of tourists. Local, international, some are high end, some are, you know, local Kenyans who want to experience and are willing to pay something. But that helps us also manage to go to schools and for the trips to go to schools we charge the international schools that can afford a minimal fee. But then I.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: They'Ve, they've disappeared into the Kenyan darkness.
I'll be back. This is going to happen once in a while.
Well, it's possible they won't be back but we'll see.
And there they are.
Laser back.
[00:29:57] Speaker C: Yeah, in the evening. Our Internet can be.
But anyway, I was saying that we really wanted something sustainable and to have it sustainable meant that we needed to have buy in from Kenyans. We needed to have a product or an experience where we have Kenyans wanting to experience it. Now we've come to learn, I think I've come to learn that. Not that I maybe probably knew it, but I've come to learn more that this is actually an experience for everyone. Whether you set up the telescope in a high end resort or in a village, the telescope becomes like a celebrity and people want to come and experience and share what they have experienced with the sky and the pictures you show there of the local Maasai.
You know, we were setting up our telescope and they wanted to be part of it. And we always allow, whether it's teachers or locals to come and experience and yeah, we've been fortunate or yeah that we've gotten Kenyans, you know, embrace what we do. It's been a long journey. It's 10 years coming to 10 years now. But from the beginning, with time they've embraced what we do. And it's because it's an easy cell in a way. You know, from kid is able to talk, they notice the moon and they want to ask questions about the moon. And similarly with very elderly people, they still have stories about the sky.
So in addition to what she was saying, we do have, we do have a very adventurous job where we get to meet a whole wide range of people from celebrities like Madonna looking through our telescope and appreciating it and wowed by it, to children who don't even have shoes, you know, having the same reaction and having Susan get starstruck or emotional struck, I don't know, just to see that reaction from something that we obviously were both very passionate about. And, you know, you're also very passionate about sharing astronomy. You've given so many people opportunities to experience that, to share their passion. And I have been a beneficiary of that through some of the programs you've run globally. So, yeah, it's such a nice thing to experience. And many people from all over the world come together because of this thing in the sky, this thing that we kind of know about but kind of don't know about and are wondering about. And it's just cool.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Fantastic. And, you know, it's the other thing. We're all the same under the night sky. Whether you're Madonna or a child in a school out in the middle of nowhere in Kenya, there's something that's a whole lot greater than all of us, no matter how great we are.
And there's something that's so awesome, and awe has. It is really powerful. And everything that you have that you hide from the rest of the world, whether you're a celebrity playing a part or just a normal person, it kind of disappears. It's just. It's. None of that seems important anymore in astronomy, so. And there are times, too, when I've recognized voices in the dark as somebody from television. And, you know, it's. But they're. You don't see them. You just. They're there. But we're all the same because it's. It's dark here. I once had Tom Hanks and his family at Mount Wilson Observatory at the telescope. And I went to another, smaller one, and a friend showed him some things through the telescope. And later he said, oh, darn. I heard Tom Hanks was here on the mountain. And I. I missed him. And I said, no, you didn't. He. You were talking to him.
He didn't realize we really are just all the same that way. It's a great equalizer because we're all just, you know, little beings on this little ball going around through the universe, and seems like nothing else matters under those circumstances.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: It makes the now, the here and the now, very important.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Very important.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: When you're gathered under the sky like that and you're all there together, it's like, that's actually the only time that the sky will ever be like that.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: You know, on one level, but also, you know, I know exactly what you mean about the whole sound thing, because sound becomes more important when you're doing astronomy because you're there in the dark by default. You're trying to turn off the lights.
And so, you know, what you. What you Hear becomes much more heightened. And we always have on our nights where we have more than a, you know, more than a handful of people, we always have a little microphone and a little wireless mic. So we kind of go around and we kind of explain some of the things that we talk about. And we also make sure that we share questions that are often youngsters have. Usually the young kids are much braver than the adults. The adults have all got burning questions, but they never ask them. Or occasionally they might, but they'll say, oh, no, no, I don't want to ask it on the microphone. They'll just sort of whisper it in.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: The first is when the adults, the parents is like, my child has a question.
But you know, it's the adult who has the question through the child. And. And yeah, so, yeah, it's just, it's cool to see also how much parents want to, you know, relieve their love for astronomy or that experience through their children. It feels like it's now when the kids come home from school and say, we learnt about the story, not about this. Like, okay, we have to really experience this. We have to go to the planetarium. We have to go for this Tasafari. We do every month of.
Start a night camping trip for most of the people in Nairobi.
And it's mostly fully booked, like people already booking for the next.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Yeah, we limit the numbers because we found if you kind of, if you have too many, then, you know, people get a bit frustrated. So we sort of. We've. We've tuned our numbers with our three different kinds of telescopes, but it's just outside narrative. Takes like an hour just over to drive there. And that's been like a regular thing for two years now.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: Yeah, we do it every month and. Except when it's raining.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: Yeah, we had some El Nino rains, unfortunately.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we get those here too.
Sorry.
So talking about having done this for quite a while, but visiting schools and so on, I know this isn't early photograph at a school that you visited with a smaller telescope quite some time ago.
[00:37:08] Speaker C: Yes, this was.
Yeah, our friend who wanted us to visit her dad, who retired, he passed on Saturday, invited us to go visit him. He had received, I think, a pair of binoculars, really powerful ones. And he was like, we'll take you to this school, a high school in western part of Kenya. And we got there and yeah, all these boys, it was a boarding school, were waiting to look through the telescope. I mean, you can see at the balcony and everything, more than a thousand kids, very, very excited to look through that tiny little thing over there. And it was our first real experience of. This is something that the young people want to do and experience and are very excited about. And I don't know if it's lucky or unlucky for us or them. It ended up raining on that day a few minutes after we arrived at the place. But we managed to give a talk and I point out a few things. And it was such, I think, a life changing experience for us as the traveling telescope. We knew for sure what we wanted to do, had an interest.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: I think the thing I remember, one of the things I remember most from that night was the laser. You know, we use these quite powerful green lasers. And this came out, we were sort of showing some things and they were just, wow. I was going, you know, the noise about the laser was, you know, more than the telescope. But yeah, unfortunately it did get a bit cloudy. So we just sort of had to think about what else we could talk about.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: But there are times when the sky is clear. In this case, looking at the sun with the same telescope with a filter on it.
Another school.
[00:39:05] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think this is again very early on, around the time we went to that school in Western and we were still didn't have any funds at all. But we're just, you know, trying to do a pilot to see the interest and how easy it was or what processes. We had to go to 20 schools. So this is a rural school in again, Western Kenya. The interest was there. They're looking at the sun and they're really like everyone is looking at whoever is enjoying her time with the telescope. But then after this tour, we decided to sit and write a proposal to the Office of Astronomy for Development to reach out to 40 schools in a month, taking the telescope and planetarium and everything. And we didn't hit our target of 40. We hit 30 schools in a month.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Nearly killed us.
[00:39:58] Speaker C: Yeah, and that really jump started the whole program. And yeah, we figured out how to do it, where to go, what we needed to do. But this was really our pilot, like just trying to understand what works, what doesn't work, what we want to do and all the things we've seen, you know, the hands on and stuff like that. The three main tools we enjoy taking to schools, obviously the telescope and then the mobile planetarium and then we have a robotics program that we take around as well. And it's space themed. So those are the three main tools that we feel we've narrowed down because we had all these many different things we wanted to do and this was when we just received donated planetarium in I think about 10 years ago. Yeah, 10 years ago. And now we've grown to.
We have our own planetarium.
We visited quite a number of schools in the planetarium. I remember the first time I entered the planetarium, I think was in Italy. And I really wanted to take back that experience. There's something about entering a planetarium and looking through a telescope and wanting to share the experience with others, not keeping what you've experienced to yourself.
And it's, it's been such a joy to be able to, to have a planetarium and chill. Building a planetarium out of bamboo, by the way. I didn't think it was gonna end up being a dome because he, when we got the bamboo, he was like, I'm gonna build a planetarium out of bamboo. And it's like, Suzy, to make sure it's gonna work, I'll build you a table. And I've never seen a table.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: This story gets worse each time. That's just, I mean it is a bit of a ropey table, but I still use it as my workbench. I mean it's solid, it doesn't look particularly beautiful, but it still functions as a table. But yeah, it didn't have much aesthetics but. Well, the geodesic dome shape, which this is, you know, that's got some very specific maths which, you know, you can get calculators online to sort of figure that stuff out. So it made life much easier. But we did a few different iterations and different tests and in fact we finished it during COVID So originally it didn't have those wing type things on it, it was just a hemisphere.
[00:42:17] Speaker C: We had meetings with some people in the planetarium world from all over the world. They're big planetariums telling us how they have to close down during COVID And we're like, hey, maybe we don't have all the funding and everything, but we have the luxury of opening up our planetarium and having it airy. So still today it's still open and airy and we've had are really amazing experiences. We have school groups coming. It's not big. We can fit comfortably around 50 children in it and maybe 35 adults.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: We could have 100.
[00:42:53] Speaker C: We could. It's just the way we've done our sitting and everything and we've had the Gen Z who come and their experiences and then they do this TikTok videos and they bring for us more and more traffic.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: It's like marketing for free. It's like you just need. You just need a young person who's got a phone and they'll just make this video and then share with all their friends and then all their friends.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: Will come and we don't do the shows most of the time. We have Ronald, who's a master physicist trained in Kenya, who was with us when we're building the penitentiary, helped build.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: It to begin with. We were doing the shows and we've sort of. We've got a specific way that we like to sort of talk about specific things like the zodiac and the ecliptic and stuff. So we had this sort of show format and then. Yeah.
[00:43:36] Speaker C: So now Ronald trained up the shows with Sylvans. And he's shy normally, but he just loves it. And he's become, you know, the famous planetarian.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: Yeah, he's really kind of blossomed into the role of the lead planetarian now. So that's been. It's been really nice to see that progression for him.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's good to see. I think it's. We're proud to see that we have other people who have learned from us and are, you know, able to do. Run the program quite well, that us supervising them throughout. Yeah.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: They were just doing shows in the background. We just. They've just packed up. We had shows going on while we were doing this.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Oh, it's. Right, that's. That. That's what was going on there. And of course. And this is inside one of the planetariums. And the mobile planetarium is.
Is common, though they're a little bit expensive, but a fixed planetarium is even more expensive. But you use what you've got. So making a planetarium out of bamboo. That may be the only bamboo planetarium in the world. Most. Most likely.
Yeah. Yeah. And. And this is what you get with a show like that. And the kids and adults really loving what's going on.
Look at that.
They're checking it out.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: We have. We have had a student who came. No university student studying it. Came to visit us and it's like I remember you visiting us in my school with your mobile planetarium. And I really like that you built a fixer because we have both. We still do the mobile one and we have the fixed one. And it's like, I would like to. He has this dating app and he wants to do this. It's called Cupid.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Cupid with you. Good.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: And he wants to do this experience you guys. That would attract Gen Z's who are dating and I don't know and we're like, wow, we have a story with you. Like, and it was like him and his friends still talk about the experience when the visitor. When we took the planetarium to the school within primary school, I think. Yeah. So it was such a hard.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Makes you realize that we've been doing it for quite a while. And now these kids that were young when we went to their school or whatever, they sort of grow up. And there was someone else that we've done a planetarium show with who became a lawyer and now she's getting very interested in space law. And that was also a kind of a, you know, it's, you feel like having some sort of little beneficial effect.
[00:46:19] Speaker C: Because our projects are kind of transactional. We don't stay and have long term ways of checking out the impact and everything. Our impact is mostly mainly the numbers. But when we get these stories, it's really, really heartwarming for us to see that there's something planted.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Yeah, you will have more and more of that, I, I guarantee you. Because it's happened to me and it happens to all of us. The thing is that you go out and you do this and it's kind of a leap of faith because you feel that you are having an impact on these kids. But it's like being a teacher, you're, that you have them for a moment in their lives and then you don't know what happens to them afterwards.
But then you meet the ones that have really been affected by that and you, you have to keep that in mind all the time that you are having a big impact. And it's not just an impact on them personally, but in Kenya, they, they, as you take off into space with small satellites and so on, a lawyer doing space law is really important. There aren't that many in Kenya, I'm sure. And so this is having a, an impact on the society itself. So this is where astronomy comes in to inspire people and, and to teach them and show them that there's another path too. So I just have to talk about that because that's, that's why we do this and that's why we're doing the podcast to show people why. So many people say, why do you want to do astronomy? You know, it's what, it's an example one time we were raising funds for telescopes for Tanzania right next door, and somebody said, well, I think they need food more than they need telescopes. And I said, they, they need people that can grow the food. They need the scientists and the engineers and, and they need the Infrastructure. They need all of those things so they can do it themselves. And that's what you guys are providing. And you're having a really big, big impact. You're, you're one of the few that has made a real go of doing this as a business. And so it's quite remarkable. And it's not just astronomy per se, but we have other things.
[00:48:46] Speaker C: Yeah. So just a little bit sorry about. Why astronomy?
When I decided to get into astronomy, it was very difficult to try and get my parents to understand why I was not pursuing my career in economics and sociology and not going to work in a bank or whatever they wanted me to work. But I was interested in astronomy. And it's only until we got featured on one of the major news channels that my mom and dad were like, you are doing something cool. And it's through one of those features that we got invited by Airbus foundation to join them and run this outreach program, a robotics program in schools. Ours is space themed. So we talk about going to Mars and how, what it means, and the students, you know, assemble robots and, and launched them and we got to underserved schools in the city and rural areas. This picture is from the same school, I think. Yes.
And they have never seen what we taken to them. Never played with this robots or Lego or even use laptops.
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So these, I mean, just to explain the photograph, we've got like a. That black thing is like, it's like a map on the floor and there's like a Mars.
There's like planet Earth there and you launch the rocket, which. These are all three sort of little kits that you make. You make a rocket. You have this little rover and then there's like a satellite solar panel thing. Sorry, a solar panel thing that opens up as a ground station and then an orbiting satellite. And there's different missions that you have to sort of complete and they work in tandem. You build that, you build the kind of Lego like things first, robots which have got these electric elements to them and motors and then you program them. So we use laptops. And some of these kids, you know, you say, oh, just drag and drop. That sort of. It's a drag and drop menu. And they're just like, I don't know what you're talking about. So you have to really. So some of the, some of the places you go, you really are starting from scratch when it comes to the it side of it as much as with the, with the astronomy stuff. Although having said that, I think there's, there's, there's there's, there's some connection that some of these communities have with the night sky, which is closer than, you know, I think you mentioned it earlier than some of the people that, you know, more and more of us live in cities now.
So, you know, that kind of closeness with the, with the stars and particularly when the center of the Milky Way is around the center of the galaxy, you know, is very visible in this particular school that these kids are at. So I don't know, I think they might have a closer connection with that. But when it comes to the technology and the robotics, obviously the, you know, we're exposing them to this stuff for the first time. A lot of them.
[00:51:45] Speaker C: Yeah, we are. And we have been running the program is still. We're coming to the end of it. We've run it since 2017.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Today.
[00:51:55] Speaker C: Yeah, about seven years are coming to the end. And it's been, you know, really, it's been a learning journey for us and them for us. I think it was really nice to add that narrative of astronomy is not just about as astronomers but. Or like going to space is not just about the astronaut, but it's a whole team that takes part in that space community and also just trying to show learners that there's a whole space industry waiting for them, whether they want to be lawyers or computer scientists or engineers. And we've had students who say that to the engineers at the beginning and at the end say we want to build rockets. So it's just been such a nice add on to our program. We will continue running the program even without the funding. And we're looking at ways to expand it so that we can, you know, have students to get engaged and explore, you know, space through all these different tools that we have. That picture is really, again, one of two speakers. Oh man. Children are going to teach to take as good pictures as you.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Well, I'm gonna, I'm going to show another picture here. That's quite a moment too.
[00:53:12] Speaker C: Yeah. And. And this one, it was, you know, she's probably now in union.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: This. This would have been seven maybe.
[00:53:20] Speaker C: Yeah, it's right at the start. So she's probably nine uni. And she. It was, it felt like it was a mixed primary school and the girls were really trying to prove to the boys that we can do it. Like we're gonna like. It was such a nice competition of. You got that? We'll get this. And it was just nice to see this empowered young girl enjoying her science and the boys not feeling threatened. It was, it was just you know, an experience for us and them. And we've been, we've really enjoyed having the robotics program as part of our programs. And we have a lot to thank. Little Engineers, the Nerves foundation and Rana, who's, you know, the co founder, the founder of this program, Little Engineers from Lebanon have been invited us to be part of this experience.
[00:54:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's one of the things that can be hard in astronomy is to kind of make, make it seem like, why are we doing this? Make it seem necessary. I know we kind of, you know, those of us who are kind of aware of how much of it is really important. For example, you know, looking at the climate, seeing how, you know, how the Earth changes, using satellites in space. And it's how we know a lot of the climate change data has come from satellites in space, in the ice sheets melt and things like that. But then things that are very resonate with, with local communities, much more are things like the locust plague. There was a plague of locusts a year ago, just over which was moving through East Africa and it was being monitored from space. And so that's like a direct benefit from seeing how space can actually make things better for us. Predicting droughts, understanding the El Nino patterns and all that kind of stuff. There's so much gps, another one that we talk about in our astronomy nights and try and encourage and enthuse people to sort of realize that it's not just this mystery of stuff that people are just, you know, doing stuff that doesn't matter. It actually does matter to us to know who we are and where we are and using scientific approach to, you know, to fix problems with the world.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: Well, you mentioned too that you make it clear that doing astronomy is not about creating astronomers. It's about creating scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, all in STEM and artists, because I know you like to use steam, which includes art, which is not about the same things, but it's another way of seeing the same things, another way of seeing our universe. And that there, there are scientists who become artists, some astronauts, well known ones, and there are artists who get involved in astronomy because that's what they, they want to do and they explore it in another way. So we explore space by going there. We explore space by looking through a telescope. We explore space in our place in it, by sitting under that night sky that you have there. And we explore it by expressing it through art or the beauty of mathematics, which most people don't get. But there is a beauty there as well. So there's so many different ways. And this is.
You've hit on so many of them. And this has been just really an extraordinary session here. It's been wonderful to talk to you guys again and catch up on what you've been doing, but especially to show all the ways in which astronomy can affect, impact people as well as you guys being fortunate enough to make a living out of it, like many people have tried, but having a real impact on society, on so many people. So I want to thank you for joining us and sharing your story. We'll just, we'll have to do this again and talk about more things. There's so much more going on. And I hope to see you in Kenya maybe later this year because I'll be taking some people to Tanzania right next door. So maybe I'll get to see you guys in person again.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: It will be an honor to have you come visit. Yeah.
[00:57:47] Speaker C: And thanks for connecting us.
[00:57:49] Speaker A: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
I connect people a lot, but they don't usually get married and I didn't think about that. So I don't know, maybe I'll have to check. Maybe it's happened to other people.
[00:58:01] Speaker C: You had some magical things happening in your control.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: So, so it's so true. You never know what's gonna happen. So.
[00:58:11] Speaker C: But we look forward, we look forward to seeing you hopefully in June, July, and part to chatting with you again in the near future. So thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to share our story.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: And yeah, thank you so much, Vince. It's such a pleasure to talk to you again.
