Google Earth and Sky

Summer vacation is coming sooner than I realized, and exams at the primary schools are now less than two weeks away. As a result there is less room for me to teach English classes that I’d hoped for, though I’ve still had formal classes with each grade a few times. And just being here inspires the students to speak a bit of English as they walk around the campus, so I’m satisfied.

The science teacher here, Mukesh, had heard somewhere about Google Earth, and wanted to know if I had it on my laptop. I didn’t, but I have a portable modem that connects to the internet the same way a cell phone does, so I downloaded the program two days ago. It didn’t take long before we were able to find his village in rural Gujarat, and Mukesh was beyond excited when he found his house. One by one, we then found the villages of all the teachers here, despite the slow connection speed of my modem.

Apparently Google Earth has added two new features: Mars and Sky. Mars isn’t too exciting, but you can see where those little robotic vehicles landed and moved around. Sky, however, is incredible. They’ve added all these high definition photos of galaxies, stars and nebulas (nebulae?), and you move around and choose what you want to see. The only thing I’ve had trouble with is using it to tour our solar system.

Anyway, last night after dinner all the students and teachers gathered in one of the classrooms, sitting in rows on the floor in front of my laptop, which was set on a desk. First we used Google Earth to find Dhanduka, the town nearest to the school. We looked at the bus stand—which had busses all lined up—and followed it past the main traffic circle and out on the road towards the school. Mukesh narrated the journey so that all the students could understand what they were looking at. We followed the road east, and Mukesh pointed out the train station and two local restaurants.

The aerial photos for this section of Gujarat were taken in 2004, and the school was built in 2005, so we weren’t able to see the school buildings. But we could see the land on which the school stands, and a big tree that all the children recognized. Then we moved into the village next to the school, and pointed out where two of the teachers live.

Next the kids wanted to see my house, so I showed them North America, Canada and the Great Lakes, and gradually moved closer into New York State and Buffalo, and finally to my house. I pointed out my high school, and the tennis courts I played on when I was on the tennis team. I also pointed out a restaurant, the post office, and a “petrol pump”, as they call gas stations here.

Then we switched to Google Mars for a few minutes, and found a picture of a recent vehicle NASA sent there. There isn’t as much to do on Mars, so we soon moved to Sky, the majority of the photos for which were taken by the Hubble. Mukesh is now in the middle of a Bachelors program in Biology, and has been studying his textbooks in the little free time he has, so all this astrological information is fresh in his mind. We looked at a detailed photo of the sun, and he explained what sunspots are, drawing a diagram on the chalkboard. He also explained the concept of a light year, and how far the sun and other stars are away from the Earth. We moved to a few different galaxies, and he explained how large a galaxy is in relation to our solar system. I also clicked on several nebulae, and Mukesh pointed out the young stars and how they are born from hydrogen and helium. There was one “deep field” photo taken by the Hubble of a field of galaxies, and we could zoom in on each galaxy and see its spiral shape, even though from a distance it just looked like a star.

The students were enraptured the entire time, and Mukesh had to keep telling them to sit back down because they wanted to move closer to the screen. It was the first time in their lives they’d seen anything even remotely like Google Earth or Sky, and it seems to have made a big impression.

This morning one of the boys pointed up at the rising sun, and then moved his hand towards the center of the sky. It was early, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. “What,” I asked. “What is it?”

“The universe,” he answered, smiling.