Star-Gayzing: Thrilled

In June I was contacted by Ruth Anderson, a staff writer at Thrillist, the culture and lifestyle website, about my Star-Gayzing articles. Ruth was writing an article for Thrillist about the relationship between the lgbt community and the cosmos. She was “absolutely fascinated” by my posts and asked if I could help with providing some insight into my relationship to astronomy. I was asked how I became interested in astronomy, what lgbt figures have influenced science, and what facts I would like to share.

What resulted was this article.

Whenever I’m asked to provide information I make sure I give more than may be required. It all depends on what the article’s writer needs and what their angle on the subject happens to be. Providing too much is better than providing too little is what I always say. I was delighted with the article and thank Ruth for the opportunity to tell people about myself.

What follows is the information I provided to Ruth, with a few additions. You can find many of the people mentioned below on this blog – put the name in the search box.

I was fortunate to be raised in a rural village where there was virtually no light pollution and my family often went outside in the winter evenings to look at the stars. I remember us all going out to look at Halley’s Comet when I came around last time. Unfortunately, I now live in Nottingham city centre and see very little, and didn’t get to see Comet NEOWISE this summer.

Stargazing with my family got me interested in the planets and from there I became interested in the asteroids. I remember copying out a list of asteroids from an encyclopedia when I was about 8. I was also fascinated by the stories and legends behind the planets and constellations and that got me interested in Greek and Roman mythology.

Most modern lgbt scientists work with many non-lgbt colleagues and their work is often a team effort. In the past scientists tended to work alone and, as with every other scientist that came up with a new theory, were often met with opposition or even ridicule from fellow scientists.

Perhaps the earliest example is Parmenides of Elea from the 5th century BC. He was the first to suggest that space was infinite and not the inside of a crystal sphere with stars attached to it. He also suggested that the Earth was spherical (Pythagoras is often claimed to be the first to suggest this but there’s no real evidence he did). Nobody took Parmenides seriously. Both of his theories were championed after his death by his former boy-lover Zeno of Elea.

Many centuries later Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), ex-priest, mathematician and spy (under the code-name Henri Fagot), expanded Parmenides theory by saying that in an infinite universe there’s an infinite number of planets inhabited by humans. Bruno was executed for heresy. Anti-Christian propaganda claims this is proof of the Church’s opposition to science and its homophobia, but Bruno wasn’t executed because of his science or sexuality. The Church accepted the existence of infinite space and planets. Bruno was executed because he said that these planets meant there was an infinite number of Christs, and the Church taught that there was only one. Effectively, the Church said that inhabitants of other planets are not human, which is just what scientists began to say 300 years after them.

The famous Copernicus didn’t believe in an infinite universe. He still believed that the stars were attached to spheres like everyone else. His theory of a Sun-centred solar system wasn’t new, he just used more maths to perfect the model, and he didn’t think scientists would be interested in reading about something they already knew. However, his protégé, Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574), a professor who made my life hell by developing trigonometry, disagreed. After being sentenced to exile from Leipzig for having sex with a male student Rheticus visited Copernicus. He persuaded Copernicus to publish his work, otherwise nobody would ever have heard of Copernicus.

There’s an interesting side-story to Copernicus. Someone once discussed Copernicus with the gay philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The person mocked the people of Copernicus’s time for believing that the Sun went around the Earth, to which Wittgenstein replied “Yes, but what would it have looked like if the Sun DID go round the Earth?” His point being that it would look exactly the same. What people, and scientists, believed before the discovery of the movements of the planets around the Sun didn’t make them stupid.

Below are some discoveries made by lgbt scientists in astronomy. They may not be well-known but they are significant in the field of astronomy.

Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and the nature of rainbows.

Transgender astrophysicist Dr. Rebecca Oppenheimer discovered the first brown dwarf star.

Transgender astrophysicist Dr. Jessica Mink discovered the rings around the planet Uranus.

Dr. Martin Lo discovered the gravitational highways through the solar system that make the voyages of interplanetary probes and satellites quicker and shorter.

Sir Arthur Eddington proved Einstein’s theory that gravity bends light during a total eclipse in 1919.

Dr. Nergis Mavalvala proved Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves.

Dr. Franck Marchis and Dr. Mike Wong discovered the first double asteroid. Both have since discovered many other asteroids and even the first moons around asteroids.

Dr. James Pollack’s study of dust storms on Mars led to research into climate change on Earth. His team came up with the term “nuclear winter”.

Dr. Lisa Harvey Smith was the first lead scientist on the construction of the Square Kilometre Array telescope, which will be the largest Earth-bound international telescope array when completed.

Dr. Andrew Chael was one of the scientists who worked on the first photo of a black hole that was released last year.

Dr. Jeremy Bailin discovered that the warp of our Milky Way galaxy was caused by the gravitational pull of the Sagittarius Galaxy as it passed us billions of years ago.

Dr. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, and the first of only two lgbt astronauts. She went on two shuttle missions and led the investigations into the two shuttle disasters.

In 132 the Roman Emperor Hadrian created a constellation in memory of his dead lover Antinous. After 1786 a constellation was created in memory of the gay German emperor Frederick the Great. Both constellations have since been split up and their stars reassigned to other constellations.

Thousands of asteroids and planetary features throughout the solar system have been named after members of the lgbt community, from craters on Mercury to mountains on Venus, and from asteroids to moons of Jupiter.

Many openly lgbt astronomers are involved in outreach work, popularising astronomy, and working in public planetaria. There is also an increasing number of openly lgbt students who are registering on lgbt science and university “out lists”, and there are many lgbt astronomy professors.

Several meteorites were worshipped as gods, and their priests were often third gender, intersex or eunuch. Perhaps the most famous third gender priests were the Three Wise Men or Three Kings who followed a star from the east in the Christmas story.

Speaking of Christmas, a Swedish theologian and historian called Nils Vilhelm Ljungberg (1818-1872) was the first to take an astronomical approach to calculating the year Christ was born. Using ancient chronologies, records of eclipses, and star and planetary charts he came up with the date of 1st October 7 BC. It’s the date that is still often quoted today.