Every week, Pars3c profiles an interesting person with connections in the space field. This time it’s John Williams (@terrazoom), a web designer and science blogger based in Golden, CO.

His site StarryCritters.com trolls the most picturesque of the images beamed down from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and others and shows children and adults alike the shapes inside astronomical formations: dragons, eagles, and cat’s-eyes.

The aim goes beyond pretty pictures, Williams tells Pars3c. His hope is to encourage critical, scientific thinking in youngsters by examining these shapes and asking questions about them.

1) How did you come up with the name and the concept of StarryCritters.com?

Originally, I wanted to write a book called HubbleZoo. The concept arose out of a talk on the images from the Hubble Space Telescope at a nature center.

A couple of young children were present when I was setting up and testing. They were asking lots of good questions about some of the images. And as always, they saw things in the images.

It did not hit home, though, until an image of the Eagle Nebula (Pillars of Creation) came up. One of the children described it as a dog jumping up. They wanted to see more, so we kept going. They kept coming up with really original and fun suggestions for what they were seeing. They were hooked and having a great time. I no longer see an eagle in the Eagle Nebula. It will always be a dog.

The name HubbleZoo seemed limiting. The book idea is still in the works, but I wanted something that involved community. So, it evolved into StarryCritters; more child friendly as well as broad enough to allow imagery from NASA’s other Great Observatories. During the summer of 2009, I heard of NASA Hubble Top Stars. They selected StarryCritters for that round, which is a great honor.

For thousands of years, humans have made up stories about the stars. As a father and informal science educator as a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador, the site’s goal is to help everyone visualize that excitement in ways not commonly accessible.

2) The site seems to be aimed at kids who are at least in junior high, if not older. How do you tailor the concept of searching for patterns to younger children?

I would like to think that the site is suitable for students young and old. StarryCritters shares the excitement of space and science with students. The site is set up as a sharing environment, encouraging imagination and the re-interpretation of fantastic images.

If questions arise, the descriptions are available as well as links to other sources of information. Once a young child is shown the click and drag interface and zooming, they explore. Maybe visiting the site offers quality time spent between parent and child. A new or renewed interest in astronomy might be sparked from that visit.

What led me to astronomy was  answering, on my own, questions about what I saw in the sky. That questioning links one right back to Copernicus, Galileo, Sagan, and a host of other scientists. We are engaged in a common journey.

Plans for the site include the ability to draw on the screen and then share that drawing and story with the StarryCritter community.

3) What are your favourite sites or sources to find your images?

I go straight to the source; NASA’s hubblesite.org and ESA’s spacetelescope.org. NASA and ESA do a great job of releasing and documenting their imagery. A good place to search for images is the Internet Archive’s collaboration with NASA called NASAimages.org.

Starry Critters includes imagery from Spitzer, Chandra, WISE and HiRISE as well as the European Southern Observatory. Those sites are invaluable in helping find new imagery. With some sites however, such as HiRISE, there is information overload. Thousands of images are available and that number only grows. It will be exciting to see what new images are released in the future.

4) Does assigning a particular pattern to a shape — calling NGC 604 a Dragon’s Nest, for example — help you remember your way around the sky a little better?

Any games we play to help remember something comes in handy. It sure is easier remembering a common name than an NGC or Messier number. It helped astronomers in the 18th and 19th centuries. They named many of the nebula: the Crab Nebula, Horsehead Nebula, Eskimo Nebula, Eagle Nebula, Silkworm Nebula. Twentieth and 21st century astronomers get to name The Mice (NGC 4676) and my favorite, the Tadpole (UGC 10214).

At first, I think it helped with cataloguing. Now, those names help popularize astronomy. Unfortunately, having a child look through a telescope is one of the most disappointing ways of getting them hooked on astronomy. Many times I’ve been at public events where folks have walked away from a telescope disappointed because it didn’t look like a Hubble image. Maybe finding their own patterns in images of space helps the public engage in a new way. It might get them to wonder where the object is, what it is, what it will look like through a telescope.

5) How do your astronomical observations change when you’re looking for pictures in a nebulae, galaxy or other formation? Are you looking for different things when you take a look at an object?

It’s great fun seeing shapes in star clouds. I think it changes the dynamic from passive to active. Someone can look at the images and see a pretty picture. That is worth a lot.

Scientists, however, look at systems and see beyond the beauty. They want to know the story. How did this nebula form? What interesting things can I describe in this galaxy interaction? How do these observations push what we know? I think seeing stories and patterns at StarryCritters helps children start down that path of critical thinking.

For children, coming up with their own stories leads them to want to interpret other things. It becomes a shepherding experience with little steps. I’d like to see them make a great story about the Horsehead Nebula and then go off finding out how the nebula glows.

High 5