What is an Astroranger?

Everybody is an Astroranger, even YOU. As long as you keep thinking about the big picture, that is, if you keep asking questions like, “Why am I here?”, “Who am I?”, “Where am I? On Earth? Then where is the Earth anyway?” And so on, then you are definitely an Astroranger. Isn’t that simple?

Who are the Astrorangers?

The Astrorangers are a group of people who dedicate their time and energy to educate and/or inform others, of all generations, about astronomy… by having fun! These people all have different backgrounds, but have one thing in common: the love for astronomy. There is nothing official (yet) about the Astrorangers, so it is not a club, but it is more like a Non-Profit Organization (NPO). All Astrorangers have a great volunteer spirit.

Why do we need the Astrorangers?


Most people think about astronomy as an interesting, yet, too serious and too difficult subject to learn. It is indeed true that astronomical research requires mathematics and physics, and that only nerdy geeks are doing it. But we believe that there is no absolute need to work out equations in order to understand the cosmos. The Astrorangers are here to make astronomy fun and accessible to everyone.

What do the Astrorangers do?

We believe that people learn a lot more when they are having fun, and that is what we’d like to provide: fun! The Astrorangers participated in all major astronomical events during the past two years. Here is the list of all the events where we showed up:
- Astroday 2K3
- County Fair 2K3
- Onizuka Science Day (Jan.2004)
- Astroday 2K4 (see www.astroday.net for infos & pics)
- Mauna Kea Astronomy Education Center Open House (Jun.2004)
- And of course, County Fair 2K4
Hands-on experiments are a very powerful way of learning and having fun at the same time: making comets out of dry ice, creating original expanding-universe balloons, and teaching the nature of light using a geometrical optics kit are some of the things we’ve done so far, besides printing posters, making T-shirts, creating stickers, and giving away our famous magnets.