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Sigh...

So Microsoft finally released World Wide Telescope the app that "made Scoble cry". Of course, he's all gushy over it. Of course he is, it lets him think he's experiencing nature without having to leave his computer.

Oh, what's that? No, of course it doesn't run on Macs. Did you really take any of Ozzie's or Microsoft's bullshit on openness seriously? It requires the .Net framework, etc. Same old story, with a new UI.

However, since I do have more than an small interest in Astronomy, (my first "real" book was on Dinosaurs, my second was on Astronomy), I decided, against all better judgement to check out the comments. (No, I didn't actually comment, I wasn't that decaffeinated.) Of course, there's Scoble insisting that the only way to really experience astronomy is with shit like WWT, because you can't see shit with anything but the Hubble. No, really, he said that:

RBA: Ok, wise guy. Show me a galaxy, even on a dark night, with even a $2,000 telescope. Simple: you can’t see shit. You need to have a Hubble telescope out in space that costs billions of dollars to see such a thing with any level of detail.

Just when I think Le Scoble has reached the nadir of stupid, he creates new digging technology.

But then, the very idea that Robert would understand the joys of amateur astronomy is ridiculous at the core. See, when it all comes down to it, professionally, Robert is about exactly two things:

Being faster

Being bigger

Everything he does has to be faster and bigger than anyone else. So the fact that he has no clue about amateur astronomy? No surprise at all.

He is no more capable of understanding the kinds of things that amateur astronomers derive joy from than a stump is of appreciating a beautiful sunset. (In the stump's defense, it's more practically useful than Scoble.) I remember the joy I got from a crappy little Tasco refracting telescope. Maybe a 3" lens. But on a regular basis, my dad and I would drive out to the end of Key Biscayne, and just look at stuff. Stars, the moon, venus. My friends and I would no more miss an episode of Star Hustler/Star Gazer than we would miss eating.

Robert looks at WWT, and thinks "This is the ultimate". Yes, if all you care about is bigger and better, perhaps. But nothing the WWT ever does will beat the nights in N.D. when, due to almost no light pollution at a friend's farm, we'd turn out all the lights on a summer's night, wait for our eyes to adjust and just stand there, watching the Universe. Seeing the myriad shapes in the Milky Way. Sometimes, someone would bring a telescope, and we'd stare even deeper into everything. The moon, the planets. Even the stars. No Hubble, no Chandra. I love the Hubble and all the others. I remember being riveted by Story Musgrave's Hubble repair spacewalks. Actually, I'm pretty much reading anything Story Musgrave cares to jot down. The best part about the Hubble repairs? It was low enough that if you were in the right part of the world at the right time, with a shitty little telescope, you could watch it yourself. Live. You didn't need to wait for Microsoft, or Google, or NASA to tell you when you could download prepared images.

There's nothing on the WWT that will ever surpass the night I saw a meteorite almost crash to earth. It didn't, but as it came down, it lit up the sky, leaving a trail of smoke and fire, roaring down to its doom. Maybe a hundred feet off the ground, it stopped. The WWT can't ever touch that. It shows you moments in time, static, unmoving, unchanging. I saw the Universe at work, as the dynamic thing it is. Gravity, heat, physics, chemistry, all of it, over Highway 2 heading east from Grand Forks AFB at ungodly o'clock in the morning. Or sitting in traffic in Clearwater, yet watching the launch of a shuttle from the other side of FL. "...can't see shit"? No Robert, it is you that can't see shit, and no amount of software or lens size will ever fix that.

The WWT can't replicate the night we all laid in truck beds and on car roofs, and watched the Aurora almost explode overhead, in a burst of yellow and green, moving, sweeping, and hissing. "...can't see shit" indeed.

I'm not knocking the views we get from Hubble, Chandra, et al. Seeing the images composited from all those observatories, those are magnificent too. They do truly show us things we'd never see otherwise.

But "you can't see shit" without WWT? Without Hubble? That's one of the saddest and most ignorant things Scoble's ever said. Which is saying something. Maybe one day, he'll stop letting his obsession with his online penis size blind him to what's available if you only go outside and look.

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Le Scoble, Robert Scoble, Astronomy, Amateur Astronomy

Posted by John C. Welch at 10:38 | Permalink

Comments

I haven't owned a telescope since I was a kid, but even just lying in the backyard at my uncle's farm looking up was always an amazing experience. There's just something about knowing that the photons hitting your retina just finished a journey that took them hundreds of millions of years to complete, straight from the heavens to your eyeball. Nothing in between. No CCD, no LCD, nothing. Hubble produces some amazing images, and I'm sure WWT is amazing, but it's not the same.

Posted by: Matt Stocum | May 14, 2008 10:53 AM

So Scoble's obsessed with Hubble? Fine. He apparently didn't see the pictures showing the same object taken with one of the four Unit Telescopes of the VLT (8.2 m, with adaptive optics) vs. Hubble. He can keep Hubble, I'll take the VLT, even if it's grounded.

… Except that at least for now, I can't point it wherever I like (nor can he point Hubble, AKAIK), so I prefer my 12" Meade LightBridge.

Posted by: Ölbaum | May 14, 2008 11:17 AM

I've lived most of my life in the eternally-lit NYC area, so it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I saw my first real aurora in a perfect night sky, up in Port Henry, NY.

It reminded me of so much about why I love astronomy.

And there was no way that experience could be effectively conveyed on a screen, no matter what the resolution of the image.

Scoble is an embarrassment of hyperbole.

Posted by: Moeskido | May 14, 2008 12:01 PM

Doesn't Scoble ever get tired of dishing out the stupid? I'm with you - nothing beats sitting out on a hilltop on a dark night and just...looking.

But for cloudy nights when you just feel like a star fix, try Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/) for the planetarium or Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html) for the zippin around the galaxy kick. Both run very nicely on a Mac.

Posted by: Fred | May 14, 2008 12:52 PM

I think that everyone in the sidewalk astronomers would take exception to Scoble's bullshit. Considering the huge membership they have in San Francisco (http://www.sfsidewalkastronomers.org/), there's really no reason why Scoble should cry about MS's Google Sky, when he could do it himself, except for the fact that he's a self-important douchebag. There's really nothing as cool as building your own telescope and then building your own skymap with it.

Posted by: dssstrkl | May 14, 2008 1:55 PM

Beautifully said. I cannot remember the last Hubble image of a solar eclipse. I was in Baja California in 1991 for that one. Watching the shadow coming out of the mountains right at us, practically on the beach, sent a chill down my spine. Watching the boiling surface through a Celestron C14 is hypnotic.

Posted by: Jim | May 14, 2008 2:58 PM

#1 best! Naked eye.
#2 Your own glass.
#3 Borrowed glass (like Olbaum said, you can't point somebody else's gear anywhere you want.)

#(way down the list) Looking at stuff on an LCD screen.

--chuck

Posted by: chuckgoolsbee | May 14, 2008 6:16 PM

The best star viewing I've ever had was on a trip around South America with my (now) wife. We were staying overnight in a town near the borders of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, ready to pass back into Chile the next day. The altitude there is about 4km above sea level, and the air was so thin you couldn't even walk fast for long. Cruelly, the refugio had a table tennis set, and we wheezed through a few games before dropping.

Anyway, that night we walked out into the local town, which had no electricity and seemingly no artificial lights. We looked up and saw the most stars I've ever seen in my life. I've lived in country areas before, and have seen many Aurora Australis, had some amazing nights of stargazing with the naked eye, but this was something completely different. The complete lack of pollution, the altitude and the clear, moon-less sky all combined to create a star-scape like nothing else.

The entire sky was lit up, from horizon to horizon. Once our eyes adjusted properly, the Milky Way became a blazing ribbon of light across the sky. The dust clouds obscuring parts of it were clearly visible, almost like ink blots with definite edges. There were so many stars visible we were able to see each other by their light alone. Around the familiar constellations were faint stars I'd never seen before. Just incredible.

Back to Earth, Scoble should easily be able to see at least three galaxies with the naked eye - the two Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda. It's pretty hard to see any more with unaided eyesight, but if he can't manage those three then he needs more help than this new telescope can give him.

The fun in amateur astronomy comes from getting out into the country on a clear night, with some hot food and good company, seeing the stars and whiling away a pleasant evening. Putting it on a computer gives nothing. Great for science, crap for enjoyment.

Posted by: GaryPatterson | May 14, 2008 6:40 PM

Andromeda IS a naked eye object

Posted by: BruceJ | May 14, 2008 6:57 PM

There is a concept that I picked up, oddly enough, from Fake Steve Jobs. Put simply, it's a variation of the old saw, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Scoble is the living embodiment of this concept. He's a tech nerd, so the solution to every problem must involve technology in some arcane way. Want to socialize, jump on some new media Web 2.0 social networking bandwagon. Want to see the stars, let Microsoft pump pictures from Hubble to your computer. For me, I'll take the hours I spent last weekend on the beach in Mexico with my friends, looking up at the stars with my own eyes.

Posted by: Angry Drunk | May 15, 2008 12:47 PM

This is the Universe. Big, isn't it?

Yet it still doesn't have enough room for egos like Scoble's.

I totally agree with you guys about the joy of observing the Universe's visible pantie line in the flesh. I find it both humbling and uplifting.

However, John's reference to the Hubble repair mission (featuring Story Musgrave) reminded me of just how wonderful it was to watch the Hubble EVA repairs on TV years ago, live, mistakes and all, broadcast by NASA at ungodly-o'clock in the morning. There were humans, in orbit, high above me, alternately moving through direct sunlight and deep shadow, performing delicate engineering tasks, for science, at risk to their own lives, while I watched.

Wonderful.

That TV broadcast was a memorable experience. I wasn't there in person. I should't be there in person. I couldn't see that level of detail with my feet on the ground. The technology delivered.

That being said, Scoble is an infant.

Posted by: Wrinkle_In_Time | May 15, 2008 10:28 PM

Sigh...

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