Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why can't you answer every question?
2. Are there questions from children that you cannot or will not answer?
3. Are there questions from the general public you cannot or will not answer?
4. Why didn't you answer my question?
5. How do you select which questions to answer?
6. Who are you, and why do you provide this service?
7. What are your privacy policies?

1. Why can't you answer every question?
   
   We would honestly like to answer every question that we receive with a personal email. The number of questions we receive has been steadily growing with time, and we no longer have the time to respond to each question. So, we made a difficult decision. We would continue to answer every email we receive from children, and we would answer select questions from the general public (See questions 4 & 5).
   

2. Are there questions from children that you cannot or will not answer?
   
   Yes, a few. We won't answer questions that are too broad or detailed to be answered in an email. We will not answer homework questions (college students are notorious for sending us thinly-disguised homework questions). We cannot answer requests for interviews about our jobs -- this is an increasingly common project for high school students, and we receive far too many requests to answer them all. Also, we will not answer questions which are answered by links on our main page, because those web sites contain far more information than we could ever email!
   Here are some examples of questions we cannot answer ("Not Cool"), and re-written examples that we would answer ("Cool").
   • Not Cool: Please tell me everything you know about Saturn. (too broad; answered by link on main page)
   • Cool: Where do Saturn's rings come from?
   • Not Cool: I am doing a science fair project. Can you give me some ideas? (too broad)
   • Cool: I am doing a science fair project on comets. Why does the tail of a comet always point away from the sun?
   • Not Cool: Here's one to stump you: Suppose you are an astronaut on the asteroid Ceres. Ceres has a radius of 100 kilometers and an average density of 5 grams per cubic centimeter. How fast would you have to jump to leave Ceres and never come back? (Homework question)
   • Cool: My physics teacher talked about "escape velocity," but I don't understand what she meant. Can you please try and explain it to me?
   • Not Cool: I am doing a project for school about a job I would like to have. Can you please answer each of the following questions in detail? [Followed by long list of questions.](interview request)
   • Cool: Well, we can't answer interview requests. If you have this project, we'd suggest calling an astronomy department at a college near you and ask if there is somebody you could interview either over the phone or by email. This spreads the interviews around, and it makes it more likely that you will get the answers you need. Also, the vast majority of astronomers are willing to talk to students interested in astronomy!

3. Are there questions from the general public you cannot or will not answer?
   
   In addition to the questions above, there are other questions that we tend to receive from the general public that we cannot answer:
   • Questions about amateur telescopes: Believe it or not, professional astronomers are, in general, a bad source of information about amateur and backyard telescopes. If you are interested in buying a first telescope, one good resource is a selection of articles from Sky & Telescope magazine. If you are have more detailed questions, or if the articles don't help you much, please contact a nearby amateur astronomy club. These people are far, far more knowledgeable about telescopes than us!
   • Questions from professional astronomers: If you are a professional astronomer looking for detailed help, please don't contact us. We are not an appropriate resource. Examples of questions we have received that we cannot answer include details about instruments on our telescopes, help in designing instruments or telescopes, and topics covered in astrophysical journals.

4. Why didn't you answer my question?
   
   If you are a child and we did not answer your question, you may not have included your age or grade. Questions without an age or grade are considered "general public" questions, and may not get a response.
   If you asked a "general public" question, it can take up to 3 weeks for a response to be included in the answer updates. Also, we answer only a few of the questions submitted. You may feel free to re-submit a question or ask a different question, but resubmission does not necessarily increase the likelihood that we will answer your question. And just because we do not answer a particular question does not mean it is a "bad" question. We may have received a lot of questions in a short time span, or any of a number of reasons.

5. How do you select which questions to answer?
   
   We select questions to answer based on a number of fairly arbitrary and inane factors. These include our personal opinion on which questions we feel may be of interest to the largest number of people, a desire to include questions covering numerous topics and numerous degrees of depth, and also a desire to answer questions that we personally find interesting or challenging. So feel free to ask any question at all -- we may well answer it in our next round of answers!

6. Who are you, and why do you provide this service?
   
   We are graduate students in astronomy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We enjoy sharing the many fascinating facets of astronomy with students and with the public at large. We are not paid for our work on this service; it is a labor of love.

7. What are your privacy policies?
   
   

   Our privacy statement can be found by clicking here.

   In short, we will not disseminate any information about you to anybody else.

Ready to ask us a question? Click here to return to our main page!

Last Update: 2001 October 10