RASC History Podcast RASC

Are we really better at making space for other traditions to express themselves? What ought we to do about representing and promoting astronomy and astronomies in a multi-cultural society heading towards our second centenary?

Special bonus episode: Heather and Randall talk about some of things that have been discussed so far in the podcast.

What is the RASC's tradition of encountering the Grand Astronomical spectacles of nature? Are there constants? What use is made of them? Are there limits to what advocates of astronomy can expect in the wake of major, and rare celestial events? Why?

The Society was founded in the tradition of learned societies which were repositories of material objects, from contemporary apparatus for loan in current experimental programs, to historic apparatus hallowed as relics of science past. How and why artifacts were kept can tell us what and how the past thought about its past. We explore these questions through several artifacts we've carefully retained, and others we've carelessly lost.

Is the gender history of the RASC a warning that "progress" in the social life of science is not always in the same direction, or at the same rate? And where are the invisible astronomers—LGBTQIA members, non-white members—in the RASC's past? Can they be identified, and their stories recovered?

Communities and the contacts which form and sustain them play a large role in astronomy. Of course, technologies and styles of communication change over time. The paper artifacts of the collaborative and social life of astronomy from the earlier periods of the RASC have a beguiling aura not of the present.