First, yes, I am a real live astronomer (when people ask me what astronomers do, I tell them "They astronom!"). My name is Philip Plait and I work at the physics and astronomy department at Sonoma State University, a member of the California State University system. The campus is about 60 kilometers north of San Francisco. I am currently working on a NASA-sponsored public outreach program for a satellite named GLAST (Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope). I just started this job in December of 2000 and I am very excited to be a part of such a great program to educate people about high-energy astronomy. Let me state here that I am not a NASA employee, and anything I say, pretty much ever, is not the official word from NASA! I always speak for no one but myself.

I spent many years as a research astronomer and programmer supporting other astronomers' work (and I still do this a bit now). In my last position, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center I worked on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). I help calibrate STIS, which means I analyzed test images taken by STIS and figured out how well it was working. I also did some actual science with STIS, which means I also got to analyze actual observations of astronomical objects. So far I have helped analyze the first ever brown dwarf discovered (a brown dwarf is an object that is too small to be a star but too big to be a planet), and also helped analyze images and spectra taken of a star that blew up in 1987, called Supernova 1987A (you can read my web page about that). I have also worked on data taken of asteroids, quasars, galaxies, normal stars, dying stars, and stars being born.

I received my PhD in astronomy at the University of Virginia in 1994. While there, I helped teach introductory astronomy classes and for three years (six semesters) I ran a nighttime lab where students used binoculars and telescopes to observe the sky. I wrote several of the exercises for that lab, which helped me learn how to communicate difficult astronomical techniques to people unfamiliar with the jargon. UVa also has an observatory located a few kilometers away from campus, and twice a year would hold Public Nights so people could come and look through the telescopes. I usually volunteered to stay outside the dome and answer questions people had about astronomy. The bug to teach basic astronomy to the public got a hold of me during those nights.

Before that, I was (and still am) an avid amateur. I had a 10" reflecting telescope for over 20 years (I bought it when I was 13 years old), and now here at Sonoma State I have access to a 14" and another 10", so I am still very much active in hands-on astronomy.

Recently I have become more interested in the history of science, including how science has been misused and misrepresented. As television and movies have become better and better at shaping our views of the world, it is becoming more and more important that we understand what it means to be scientific. Like it or not, those that understand science and technology will always have the advantage over those that don't. If everyone had even a basic grasp of scientific principles, this planet would be a better place.

Finally, am I really a bad astronomer? I don't think so! I would say I am an average one. But on these web pages, I'm discussing astronomy that is bad. Hence the name.

Download our interview with Phil Plait

Links for Dr. Phil Plait

Bad Astronomy Web Site
Bad Astronomy Book
Phil Plait's Blog
Phil Plaits Bad Astronomy in Movies!