International Symposium on Astronomical Exchange
Between China and Other Countries: A Report
Dale W. Smith
President-elect, IPS
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403 USA
Beijing Ancient Observatory
In the year 1442, during the seventh year of the Zheng Tong period
in the reign of the Ming Dynasty, an astronomical observatory
was founded in the city that today is called Beijing. The builders
constructed a massive stone platform 14 meters (47 feet) tall.
Long exterior stairways wound to the top, stretching past an imposing
porch whose stone railing resembled a row of battlements. But
the weapons atop this tower were turned to the sky - this tower
was equipped with the very latest of astronomical instrumentation.
An armillary sphere held up by dragons tracked the positions of
celestial bodies. A gnomon tracked the movements of the Sun and
measured the length of the tropical year.
In the decades that followed, successive generations of astronomers
built up an impressive array of instruments to map the sky and
its movements. Fashioned of bronze, ornately engraved, and marked
with precise graduations, these instruments stood at the apex
of naked-eye astronomy. By the time of the Qing Dynasty in 1673,
the observatory had been enriched with an ornate sextant for measuring
the angles between stars and with a quadrant and an altazimuth
for measuring stellar altitudes and azimuths. Equatorial and ecliptic
armillae also joined the parade of instruments. Set atop a base
of dragons, their interlocking celestial circles turned to measure
the angles between stars and planets in both the equatorial and
ecliptic coordinate systems. A great celestial globe more than
a meter across displayed a host of stars on its surface and provided
a convenient means of tracing their movement across the sky and
of calculating the times and azimuths of their risings and settings.
Later in the Qing Dynasty, another ecliptic armilla was added
to the array, primarily to measure true solar time.
As their instruments looked skyward, the Ming builders also looked
to the courtyard below and in the 1440s they constructed the graceful
Purple Hall, today wonderfully restored and resplendently appointed
in a brilliant red. Inside, an array of exhibits displays the
proud heritage of Chinese astronomy and a high banner in ancient
Chinese proclaims the Observatory's mission in its heyday - to
study the world by tracking the stars.
In 1957, during the era of Chairman Mao, a planetarium was founded
a few thousand meters from what was by then called the Ancient
Beijing Observatory. Stretching 23 meters (78 feet) across, surrounded
by exhibit areas, verdant grounds, and a pair of small public
observatories, the planetarium was designed to seat 600 and was
equipped with the latest planetarium instruments.
The Symposium
In 1997, on the 555th anniversary of the Ancient Beijing Observatory
and the 40th anniversary of the Beijing Planetarium, an international
symposium convened in the Purple Hall. The symposium's theme,
"Astronomical Exchange Between China and Other Countries",
and the conference language - English - brought together a score
of international delegates and as many Chinese. European delegates
hailed from England, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the Vatican.
Asian delegates came from Sri Lanka, India, and Japan, and the
remainder of the international delegates were American. The conferees
represented a broad spectrum of interests, among them astronomer,
museum curator, planetarian and teacher, historian and archaeoastronomer.
The relatively small size of the conference, the eclectic mix
of nationalities and interests, and the careful preparation and
collegial welcome of the conference hosts all helped foster a
lively and informal atmosphere. The days were intellectually invigorating
and filled with bonds of new friendships and professional contacts.
The warm greetings of conference host Cui Shi Zhu and her staff
made us feel at home even as we recovered from a 12-hour time
change and 8000 miles of airplane flights. Prof. Cui is Director
of both the Beijing Planetarium and the Ancient Beijing Observatory,
and he serves IPS as a member of the Language Committee. Deputy
Director Lin Qiao ably handled many of the conference arrangements,
kept us all organized, and patiently tolerated those of us who,
camera in hand, were perpetual cabooses during the various tours.
Dr. Sun Xiaochun provided superb translations and bilingual commentary
to link those of us who shared common interests but spoke no common
language.
On the morning of the first day, we assembled at the Observatory
entrance to receive our registration packets and accept a gift
of books describing topics in early Chinese astronomy and celebrating
the history of the Beijing Planetarium. Then we stepped through
the circular threshold of the Moon Gates and entered the observatory's
inner courtyard whose grounds display a fascinating collection
of the ancient instruments restored and replicated. A team of
skilled twentieth-century craftsmen have recreated the metalworking
techniques of their forebears and fashioned working copies of
the tools of the ancient tradition.
We were greeted in a formal ceremony by the Vice-Mayor of Beijing,
posed for group photos, and then assembled in the Purple Hall
for the opening ceremony. This session included welcoming remarks
by the conference organizers and by me representing IPS. Following
an opening 45 second greeting in Chinese, which I was speaking
for the first time, I confined the remaining 14 minutes of my
remarks to English. I described the work of IPS, the educational
role of the planetarium, and the place of historic Chinese astronomy
in planetarium programs. These remarks are reprinted as an appendix
to this paper.
Symposium papers
The next two days were filled with stimulating paper sessions
that dealt with ancient and modern Chinese astronomy and with
astronomical exchange between China and the rest of the world.
Prof. Li QiBin, director of the Beijing Observatory and president
of the Chinese Astronomical Society, summarized the work of modern
China's 1000 astronomers and support staff at their five national
observatories. Their work covers solar, planetary, stellar, and
galactic astronomy. It is largely published in Chinese, but some
is also published in English. He described new major projects
including the construction of LAMOST (Large Aperture Multi-Object
Spectroscopic Telescope), which is to be a 4-meter Schmidt telescope,
and a proposed multi-dish radio telescope to be spread over a
30x50 km grid and to have a total collecting area of 1 square
kilometer (!) and a resolution of 1 milliarcsecond. Prof. Ai GuoXiang,
a leading solar astronomer at the Beijing Observatory, described
the proposed Space Solar Telescope. A 1-meter optical telescope,
it is a joint project with Germany and is slated for launch in
2002. The telescope will carry a multichannel polarizing spectrograph
among other instruments and, with high spatial resolution, will
search for magnetic fields as strong as 500 gauss suspected to
exist in solar flares. (By contrast, the Earth's magnetic field
is about half a gauss.)
We heard other papers describing efforts in contemporary astronomy
education in China. Prof. Cui ZhenHua, former director of the
Beijing Planetarium and now chair of the Popularization Committee
of the Chinese Astronomical Society, summarized current work in
astronomical outreach. In addition to university and graduate
programs, popular astronomy enjoys widespread support. Many high
schools have astronomy groups and some have observatories as well.
Adult and school-based amateur astronomy societies number about
30.
Planetariums are numerous as well-besides the large planetariums
in Beijing and Hong Kong, China has nearly 100 midsize and smaller
planetariums. Built throughout the 1980s and 1990s, these facilities
feature domes in the six to ten-meter range and are found primarily
in schools, children's palaces, and science museums.
Some astronomical facilities are underwritten by corporations.
For example, Niu Xiu Yun described her outreach programs which
are underwritten by the Daqing Petrochemical Works. Their facilities
include an 8-meter planetarium, an observatory with a 20 cm refractor
and teaching facilities, and a second observatory with a 16-inch
Meade computer-controlled telescope equipped with a CCD camera
supported by a Pentium 586 for data reduction and linked for image
transfer to a large multifunction hall. The latter observatory
sits atop a beautiful tower whose exterior is adorned with constellations.
Many papers covered aspects of historic Chinese astronomy. Prof.
Chen JiuJing (China) described differences between the traditional
Chinese lunar mansions and those of southern Chinese nationalities
- they divided the lunar ecliptic into 28 mansions; many were
named for animals but some were named for daily objects and all
were related to influences of the Moon as it passed through them
on its monthly circuit. Zhao XiQun (China) explained the work
of the second century astronomer Zhang Heng, who developed theories
of an infinite evolving universe that were quite different from
the more static and finite models prevalent in the West. Cai Nima
(China) told of the Shangdu Observatory. Founded in 1272 in Mongolia,
it used a yurt-like structure that may have inspired the ornate
domes later built farther west in Samarkand. Qi Jing (China) showed
a fascinating connection between star names and names of writing
ink used in the Ming Dynasty. Prof. Han YanBen (China) described
how records of eclipses as far back as 300 BC can be used to measure
the secular slowing of the Earth's rotation. They show the day
lengthening by 2.4 milliseconds per century, consistent with the
slowdown rate expected from tidal friction.
Further papers explored connections and contrasts between Chinese
and European, Indian, or Japanese astronomy. Dr. Ichiro Hasegawa
(Japan) described the 7th century work of Priest Min; inspired
by study in China, he was the first recorded Japanese astronomer.
Dr. Ramatosh Sarkar (India) emphasized the contrast that Indian
astronomy absorbed more Greek influence and was ecliptic-based,
whereas Chinese astronomy was more equator-based. Lin Qiao (China)
showed another contrast: the Chinese mythological organization
of the sky was a well-organized society and centered on the pole
star, whereas the Greek placement of myths in the sky had no systematic
organization. Dr. Katalin Barlai (Hungary), reporting collaborative
work with I. Ecsady, showed yet another contrast: Chinese constellation
mythology is based on themes of community, whereas Greek myths
feature the actions of individuals. But sharing same latitude,
the two cultures both saw the same sky and their constellation
mythology shares common themes - for example, their stories explaining
the antipodal positions of Orion and Scorpius both have a theme
of conflict. Dr. Juan Casanovas (Vatican) explained that the Jesuits
brought to China the Tychonic rather than the Copernican planetary
model because they used Tycho's tables of planet positions, which
were the most accurate available.
Some papers focused on single cultures. Prof. R. Subramanian (India)
described many aspects of historical Indian astronomy and Amalendu
Bandyopadhyay (India) focused on the diverse computational work
of the 19th century astronomer Samanta Chandrasekhar. Dr. Clive
Ruggles (England) explained evidence that prehistoric stone circles
in Britain may have been placed to give intervisibility between
sites and to use horizon features as lunar markers.
A pair of papers ranged over a variety of cultures. T. C. Samaranayaka
(Sri Lanka) gave a evocative description of the achievements of
early skywatchers and Dr. George Reed (USA) outlined three stages
- primitive wonder, practical use, and advance of knowledge -
in the motivation for engagement with the sky.
Several papers dealt with planetariums and education methods.
George Reed (USA) emphasized the role of smaller planetariums
as a classroom. Takatsugu Yoshida of Minolta (Japan) described
many of the subtle sky cycles the new Infinium projector can demonstrate.
Kyoji Saito (Japan) explained a portable planetarium dome he has
designed. Jeanne Bishop (USA) described a Starlab cylinder she
designed based on ancient Chinese sky figures. Dr. R. Ramakarthikeyan
(India) demonstrated a variety of participatory human models of
teaching astronomy and Prof. S. Gopinath (India) outlined the
last half-century of progress in Indian astronomical research
and education.
Cultural activities
The paper-session days were also filled with a variety of other
activities. Lunch on the first day was a Chinese banquet. Serving
after generous serving of Chinese food appeared at our tables;
rice and tea were just the beginning, and we feasted on a wide
variety of meats, vegetables, and seafood, some familiar, many
- such as eel - more exotic. The next day lunch featured a McDonald's
carry-in and the following day we lunched with the Colonel (Kentucky
Fried Chicken). We wondered if Pizza Hut was next in line, but
(gratefully, to my palate at least) we returned to generous Chinese
lunches the last two days.
We were treated to Chinese opera the first evening. Though my
body protested from jet lag, my mind was alert to the brilliant
colorful costuming and was intrigued by the stories hidden for
me behind the veil of a language of unfamiliar sounds and a music
of unfamiliar harmonies. Most of all, I was left incredulous at
the maze of multiple baton-passing by hand and foot without a
single miss!
The conference dates (Sept. 15-19, M-F) included the night of
full moon before the autumnal equinox. So we returned of an evening
to the Ancient Observatory courtyard for a sumptuous Chinese buffet
and an Autumn Moon Festival of song and dance. Though we visitors
could not follow the words, we were charmed by the warmth of the
adult musicians and by the beauty of their sound, and we were
amazed at the young children who exuded such talent and stage
presence. Then came the karaoke time, and after hearing the rich
voice of our new friend Cai Nima of inner Mongolia, we Westerners
gathered our courage and sang Happy Birthday to the Planetarium
and Ancient Observatory.
We also knew that an eclipse of the Moon loomed later that night.
At the invitation of Li Bing, six of us piled in taxis to the
observatory at the Hai Dian Youth Science and Technology Center,
where she teaches. The Center serves 200,000 students from dozens
of primary and middle schools throughout Beijing. We toured the
new observatory under construction and examined an impressive
gallery of astrophotos. First contact came around midnight, and
we watched the eclipse unfold from the roof-top skydeck amidst
the silhouettes of enthusiastic students and their telescopes
trained on the moon high above the nightscape of Beijing. By 2
a.m. our body clocks were screaming at the near all-nighter just
two days out of home 12 time zones away! A speedy taxi ride across
Beijing brought us to the hotel and an early wake-up just four
hours later.
After the paper sessions ended early Wednesday afternoon, the
third day of the symposium, we bade farewell to the Ancient Observatory
and moved to the Planetarium, its facade festooned with banners
to celebrate its 40 years of astronomy education. We toured the
exhibit halls that surround the dome. Although few of the international
delegates could read the language, the images of the planets and
the cascading stages of star life were scenes familiar to us all.
Then we entered one of the world's most capacious planetariums.
Recalling that volume goes as the cube of the radius, it was sobering
to realize that this 23-meter dome could hold nearly eight times
the volume of my mere 12-meter dome. After time to look around,
we were treated to a show on the search for life in the Universe.
While the narration was naturally in Chinese, it was easy to follow
the images from Earth to Mars to the stars, to enjoy the variety
of special effects, and to appreciate that though languages and
continents may separate us, a curiosity about common questions
can serve to unite us. We then turned to the domes of the other
kind, a pair of observatory domes with telescopes for public viewing,
and had time to enjoy the tree-lined grounds as well.
The last two days were filled with sightseeing and tours. On Thursday
morning we motored to the lakeside Huirou Solar Observatory where
we saw a model of the Space Solar Telescope being tested. A daring
tower which is more sturdy than its slender appearance might suggest
is technical base and pedestal for a solar telescope set on the
roof above. An observatory dome rolls away from the telescope
to an overhanging storage ledge. The stunning setting amidst lake,
mountain, and small villages made a strong contrast to the busy
streets of Beijing. We continued north toward the Great Wall,
but first stopped for lunch in an enormous restaurant occupying
the entire second floor of a huge Friendship Store whose capacious
ground floor is a superbly stocked retail area. Soon we arrived
at the Great Wall, walked along its crest as it undulated across
the green mountains, posed early and often for pictures with each
other, and marveled at the magnitude of even this small portion
of the Wall we had all heard of but were largely seeing for only
the first time. The bus rides and meals of the day were time to
talk and secure new bonds of friendship.
We spent the last day, Friday, at two of the great sights of Beijing,
the Forbidden City in the morning and Temple of Heaven in the
afternoon. Temples and shrines rose above enormous courtyards.
Dragons, lions, and a sacred menagerie of symbols animate and
inanimate gave meaning to the buildings and spaces. Long stone
walkways connected the various temple complexes. We stood among
a set of the defining structures of one of our planet's great
and enduring cultures.
Too soon, our time together in China was at an end and we spread
out to wing our separate ways home. But we had spent time in a
land where modern astronomers and planetarium educators are building
in a twentieth-century way on the rich heritage of those who came
before. We met dedicated, talented, and enthusiastic planetarians
who are busy sharing the wonders of the cosmos with their classes
and audiences in creative and innovative ways, and who are eager
to reach out and build bridges across what could be barriers of
language and culture. We came home enriched by what we had learned
and inspired by knowing new friends and colleagues in a land that
a week earlier had seemed far away.
Appendix:
Welcoming Remarks Delivered to the Symposium
Good morning. It is a privilege for each of us to be here. On
behalf of the International Planetarium Society, it is a pleasure
to salute the work of the Beijing Planetarium and the Ancient
Beijing Observatory and to bring greetings to you all. In my remarks,
I will address the planetarium as a resource for astronomy education
and will relate it to the content of this conference. First I
will briefly describe IPS and its work.
IPS and its work
IPS is the worldwide organization of planetarium professionals.
Founded in 1970, it has grown to a membership today of nearly
800 planetarians representing 35 countries and six continents.
In addition, eighteen smaller regional planetarium associations
in Europe, Asia, and North America are currently affiliated with
IPS. IPS is governed by an Executive Council composed of the elected
officers and representatives of the regional affiliates.
The current IPS President is Thomas Kraupe of Munich, Germany,
and he sends his greetings to you all.
IPS and its regional affiliates serve their members with a wealth
of conferences, publications, and other resources. IPS publishes
a quarterly journal, the Planetarian, now in its 26th year.
IPS publishes two major biennial directories. One is the IPS
Directory of the World's Planetariums, a comprehensive listing
of all planetarium facilities known to us. The other is the IPS
Resource Directory, a listing of hundreds of companies and
organizations providing products and services of interest to planetarians.
IPS also produces occasional Special Reports, and with the advent
of electronic communication, IPS is developing a comprehensive
World Wide Web site.
Recently, IPS began a service to provide members with slides of
very current images from space missions and the Space Telescope,
and plans for a corresponding timely distribution of video clips
are also being made. These services are provided in cooperation
with the Space Telescope Science Institute and JPL and with the
regional affiliates.
Together with the officers, a network of committees performs much
of the society's structural work and responds to timely opportunities.
For example, a new initiative in planning is the Partnership Committee.
We hope to facilitate twinning efforts between planetariums across
national boundaries, and to help match resources with areas of
need. We have recently inaugurated Astronomy Link, a roster of
research astronomers who are available to answer questions from
their planetarium colleagues. Other committees or subcommittees
include those for finance, elections, awards, outreach, language,
publications, lasers, technology, astronomical accuracy, and the
web.
The flagship activity of IPS is the biennial conference. Held
in even-numbered years at planetariums around the world, these
conferences bring together several hundred planetarium professionals.
Recent conference sites have included Borlänge, Sweden in
1990; Salt Lake City, USA in 1992; Cocoa Beach, Florida, USA in
1994; and most recently, Osaka, Japan in 1996. The Osaka conference
featured lively accounts of planetarium and science centre work
across Asia, including Japan, China and Hong Kong, Kuwait, Malaysia,
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, as
well as papers given by planetarians from Europe, North America,
and Australia.
The forthcoming 1998 conference will be held next year in London,
England, UK from June 28-July 2. In addition to paper, poster,
discussion, and workshop sessions, this conference will feature
visits to Stonehenge and Greenwich and a post-tour to astronomical
sites in Ireland. We are also hoping to provide remote interactive
access to parts of the conference for members unable to travel
to London. We hope you will consider attending. If you are interested,
please see me for further information.
The year 2000 conference will be held in the Planétarium
de Montréal in Montréal, Québec, Canada,
and we are currently considering proposals for the 2002 conference
site.
Planetariums and Astronomy Education
Founded as star theatres in the 1920s, planetariums have diversified
in the last generation to become major centers of astronomy and
science education. The star projector which guards the center
of every planetarium has been joined in most midsize and larger
facilities by one or more of a host of other projection systems,
such as automated banks of slide projectors, a variety of special
visual effects projectors, whole-dome graphics projection, whole-dome
color laser systems, one or more video projectors, multichannel
sound systems, large format film projectors, new dome-filling
seamless digital video systems, and audience response systems.
All these systems have served to expand the educational potential
and mission of the planetarium. With their use guided by the educational
vision of the director, these tools can help convey both the content
and the excitement of an enormous range of astronomical and other
scientific themes, and they can do so in a way that attracts and
appeals to audiences of the 1990s and beyond. Planetariums can
report the latest results from the depths of space, they can retell
an ancient sky legend in a captivating way, and they can display
the timeless beauty of the starry sky.
Planetariums now serve public audiences and school classes in
at least 82 countries around the world. They are found in schools,
in colleges and universities, in science centers and museums,
and as stand-alone facilities, and an increasing number of portable
planetaria are joining the world's 2000 fixed domes. Planetariums
range from small, one-person facilities in schools to large, high-tech
facilities in science centers. Together, the world's planetariums
serve more than 40 million visitors a year, and so they are powerful
centers for bringing astronomy to the public.
Though planetariums are evolving into diverse multimedia theatres,
a central component of their worldwide appeal lies in the sight
of dark star-filled sky that planetariums alone among public theatres
can project and teach. The sight of this sky is the common heritage
of all our diverse cultures. The sight of this sky was the template
on which all ancient astronomy was built and is the foundation
from which modern astronomy has grown.
Planetaria and Chinese astronomy
The people of China, both ancient and modern, have responded to
this sky. Most of us who teach astronomy or run planetaria have
recounted the story of the "guest star" whose record
in Chinese chronicles of the year 1054 inspired the modern discovery
of the Crab Nebula supernova remnant. Today, the 20th century
successors of these ancient Chinese astronomers are conducting
their own active supernova search program at the Beijing Observatory.
Planetariums can tell the story of both.
Many of us in the West have pointed out the Milky Way and the
stars Vega and Altair, and then told the touching Chinese story
of the lovers Chih Nu, Goddess of Weaving, and Ch'ien Nu, royal
herdsman, who for neglect of their duties were banished to opposite
banks of the heavenly river. Planetariums are superbly equipped
to share with the world the astronomical heritage of ancient cultures
such as China, and many planetarium programs have already done
this. For example, a program on ancient Chinese astronomy was
among those developed in an astronomy/mythology series in the
late 1980s in the US and distributed to all 50 states for use
by educators. More recently, as we will hear in a talk by Dr.
Jeanne Bishop later in the conference, a projection cylinder for
portable planetariums has been developed to show the Chinese constellations
on the starfield.
Because the sky is international, so too is the planetarium, and
so too are very many planetarium educators. IPS seeks to reflect
and embody this international and multicultural viewpoint. Among
our current major goals are:
(1) to expand the international diversity of our membership; for
example, it is our goal that planetarians in China and across
Asia will become part of IPS. In this way, we may more easily
share our resources and insights with each other, and enhance
our work as astronomy educators.
(2) to foster more international exchange among our members so
that members in each country learn more of the rich heritage of
astronomy in other nations and learn from the planetarium methods
of their international colleagues.
(3) to promote contacts between IPS members and professionals
in closely related fields, such as research astronomers and other
science educators.
The planetarium is a natural medium for conveying to an international
public many of the topics to be discussed in this symposium. Planetarians
are among the participants in this conference, and many of our
colleagues at home would also be interested in various aspects
of the work presented here, and perhaps incorporating them into
their educational programs. Collaboration between planetarium
educators and delegates to this symposium can be mutually beneficial,
and IPS seeks to encourage and promote such cooperation.
Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to an exciting
conference.
Reprinted (minus photographs) from the Planetarian,
Vol 27, #3, September 1998. Copyright 1998 International Planetarium
Society. For permission to reproduce please contact Executive
Editor, Sharon Shanks.
