Science beyond translation..

Have you ever wanted to learn a new language?
Why would you ever want to do that?
Could it be to gain access to new ways acquiring scientific knowledge, for instance?
Euronews, an European news TV channel, has a multi-language approach to news broadcasting. It provides news in many different languages! Specifically, it provides the SAME news in different languages.. Or at least one would expect them to be the same!..
Hmm, Who do they translate the science spots? Could they be automatically translated using any famed automatic translation tool available online?

If you can understand Portuguese, I invite you to take a look at the following science spot from Euronews, "Origins of our galaxy", in Portuguese, and compare it to the same one in English.
The first obvious difference is the title, which translates from "origins of our galaxy" to "técnica fotográfica ajuda a estudar estrelas". But that is acceptable; it's like changing from "origins of our galaxy" to "photographic technique helps studying stars".
The nonsense starts revealing it self on seconds 00:26 of the video when the Portuguese version talks about the "Milky Way constellation"!.. We know a constellation is sort of an "official" asterism, that presents an easy to find figure on the sky to facilitate searching for a given "place" up there. A constellation is not a galaxy.
The next piece of video nonsense comes at 2:24, where a scientific acronym gets translated. In the video, MAD, or Multi-conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator, is turned into "Multi-Conjugação Adaptativa e Demonstradora Adaptável do Sistema Óptico"! Which I can re-translate to english so you (might) understand: "Adaptive Multi-conjugation and Adaptable Demonstrator of the Optical system". I would love to see how this gets translated to Portuguese again!
Anyway, the most serious part is still to come. The Portuguese video mentions the VLT to "use an infra-red system"! Ooooo! It's almost like one of those mysterious black boxes that are stored next to the telescope mount, just 2 meters away from the instruments' power supply unit.. A special IR-system that changes light, making it a superb source of scientific information!... Well... The English video simply says that VLT is meant to "observe light in the Infra-Red", which is either a slightly, or just a totally different thing! It spoils all the magic that a super-secret I.R. System box could spell onto the observation data...

Oh well, I still wish I had one of those Multi-Optical Adaptational Conjugal Demonstrator Systems... Or was it a Multi-Adaptable Optics Adaptation System Demonstration Thing?...

The MONS, as an experience: a retrospective

The MONS was one unique experience to me. It taught me a lot!
The telescope is exactly the classical German Equatorial type that allows you to do everything. You point it, you move it, you care for it, all this so that you can use it! It is the most part of the dream any amateur who started with modestly frugal equipment has. However, there was an unexpected taste in this experience.
On one hand, the MONS belongs to a professional observatory, on the other it is an "educational" telescope. Usually, people who go there do not know very well how to really care and take care. There are people who don't always know how to treat a telescope and sometimes people-injuring accidents happen. They have happened in the past. This leads the institute in-charge of the observatory to take preventive fool-proof measures, which somewhat limits what any visitor can do.
Though I have cared for the scope as if it were mine, I never actually felt it was my scope. And I think this ruled atmosphere was to blame.. Not being part of the staff, I am not allowed to try to collimate the telescope; I am also not allowed to hang extra-weight on the telescope.. These are two examples of perfectly understandable rules.. But..

The scope was carefully balanced if you left the cover on, which is not of a specific interest to the common observer. I still don't know if this is done on purpose or not. But no one, independent of it's knowledge, is allowed to do anything about it. Only the maintenance people can do certain things. Any engineer knows the math to estimate how much weight can be placed, and where, to balance the scope, but only maintenance personnel can touch it.
It's curious to note that a 1972 instrument that was almost neglected, on one hand, no longer is a state-of-the-art instrument -- so nobody seems to really want it; on the other hand, no one wants to let go of it.. Do this in a insular Spanish observatory, isolated by Atlantic waters, with a strict organization, and you get the MONS.
The MONS telescope is like this historical caliper with exchangeable tips. You can use the caliper and move it around, but if you want to change tips, you need to call the experts, who work on their own timetable. The caliper is not the most modern one, so it is not considered prioritary for current science, however, no one wants to let go its historical value.

So, an observatory does not seem to me like the dream location that would replace your own telescope. It is a place like any other where you find an unrelated interaction between people of different abilities and people playing different roles. I learned that going to an observatory to "play" with the telescope, is not the same as going to your father's tooling shop to "play" with the lathe machine, mostly because you lack your father as the authority. But it ends up being a work place where each person has its own undocumented value in the cumulative process.
I lacked the knowledge to adequately process the data I was acquiring. I also did not know how to look at our data and check if it was looking good. However, there were people who were supposed to know this, but which did not know how to "use" such an un-automated telescope. Definitively, there is more than enough room for amateurs to cooperate with professional researchers.

However, it was far from being a disappointing experience! Despite the six-and-a-half consecutive nights with bad weather, it was the best vacation I ever had, and I would gladly repeat such endeavor!


The people and policies behind the MONS observatory are only doing what they know how to do. That is the way the equipment is maintained. That is the way safety is kept. That is the way science is made. The MONS is not a playground for scientific astronomy, as the amateur may dream.. The MONS is the science's door that allows almost anyone with a science project to go there and make their science! All the joy that is lived there is a pure extra!