A pop-up event at the Boston Children’s Museum:

By Rudi Anna
12/14/2016

Stepping out last Friday night from a bustling Boston Children’s Museum, Jesse, a curious 11-year-old from Roxbury, Massachusetts, spied something unexpected.

A few feet away, more museum patrons assembled moments before stood at a telescope, looking up at the darkening night sky.

“What are you guys doing?” Jesse asked, striding up to the group, eyeing the telescope as his mother and little brother trailed behind.

“Looking at Saturn,” a response came. “Want to see it?”

Jesse was game. He approached the complicated instrument, pressed his face to the eyepiece, and peered through.

“What do you see?” asked a group member.

“Nothing,” said Jesse.

The group member, Michael O’Shea, a chummy, 26-year-old higher education consultant, gives a little advice to the unsuspecting astronomer, minor adjustments.

A few seconds pass and victory, “Oh wow! I see Saturn. Mom, come look.”

Discoveries like these are why Popscope started, O’Shea said.

He leads a Boston chapter of stargazing enthusiasts called Popscope, an organization dedicated to sharing astronomy, science and a sense of community with people who might not otherwise be exposed to it.

Stargazing is usually considered the stuff of solitary time in open fields away from the noise and lights of the city, but Popscope shows it can be a communal urban activity too.

Growing up in Chicago, O’Shea cultivated an early love of the night sky with a telescope he received for his 12th birthday.

“It just blew me away visually, and I didn’t have the words for it then. It blew me away philosophically, too,” said O’Shea, who grew hungrier to explore the starry expanse with streaking comets and supernovae, and the treasures he felt it could unfold, like the moons of Jupiter and the transit of Venus.

But the honeymoon with the sky would only last for little over a year. O’Shea wanted to view more, but he said living in the light polluted electric grid of Chicago eventually meant he “ran out of stuff to see. My parents never took me out to the country to get that real night sky, and I just was sort of over it.”

O’Shea’s astro-love did indeed dwindle, but it didn’t die. “Once you see starlight and really understand where it comes from, it changes you,” he said.

The philosophical effect on his spirit had been too strong. In the passing years, he said he found inspiration from pictures sent by the Hubble Telescope of the early universe and the panoramic vistas delivered from rovers roaming around ruddy red Mars and snapping never-before-seen images.

Then in college at McGill University in Montreal, O’Shea met someone who shared his passion for the cosmos. Their friendship marked the beginning of big things for both of them.

A partnership is forged

Viva Dadwal left New Delhi, India when she was 17. As a middle-class female raised in a densely-populated urban area surrounded by poverty, access to public space at night was a non-starter and buying a telescope was unheard of. However, astronomy as a subject fascinated her. Though she lacked the first-hand experience of seeing many stars and such, she read and watched anything she could about the cosmos, finding a sense of place in her explorations.

She quickly learned, when she arrived in Canada for college, that she could access what to her were exotic items and experiences. Walking through the park at night as a female wasn’t laughable here. 24-hour convenience stores to grab something in the wee hours were available.

But she didn’t stop there.

Prior to their starting Popscope, O’Shea and Dadwal experimented with another jump-start endeavor they called Bookstop, which involved setting up portable bookshelves around their campus bus stops. The idea was people could grab a book while they waited and take it with them, then return it at their leisure.

During these rounds of “loitering,” Dadwal and O’Shea would converse with book browsers and each other on a span of topics. It wasn’t long before they uncovered their mutual love of astronomy. O’Shea told her about stargazing when he was a kid. He told her he was interested in doing it again.

“No way. You’re not rich. I’m not rich,” Dadwal recalle telling O’Shea when he broached the idea of the two of them buying a telescope. “I couldn’t believe it.”

But then they did buy a telescope and a tripod for just under $100.

A Popscope member discusses how she got involved:

The rise of an idea

With telescope in hand, Dadwal and O’Shea set out into the streets of Ottawa. They found a spot across from a Salvation Army building with a decent sky clearing and minimal street light glare.

That night, Saturn was showing off in the low eastern sky. O’Shea introduced his partner to a close-up view of the gas giant, spinning around in its rings, millions of miles away.

It was then that, as O’Shea puts it, “a beautiful collision occurred.”

A man with ragged clothes and unkempt features ambled up to them. O’Shea and Dadwal’s instincts told them this man was of the sort to be avoided, but something in his swagger steered them differently.

“That might be a case where it’s like, speak to the hand,” said Dadwal. “But the first thing he asks us is if we’re looking at Saturn. Then this presumably homeless guy tells us what he knows about it, and he goes on to list each of its moons.”

“He just schooled us on his knowledge of Saturn,” remembered O’Shea, including that this conversation attracted others walking by who wanted to stop and look.

Dadwal knew they were on to something.

“I’m passionate about people. We thought this was a great way to meet other people and engage others in a unique way,” said Dadwal. She thinks if it hadn’t been for that fateful encounter with the Saturn street scholar, “we might never have started #Popscope.”

They started holding pop up viewing sessions all around the city. The recipe was simple. People would pass by, eyeing the telescope. O’Shea or Dadwal would engage them, beckoning them to take a look. Usually, a conversation started, sometimes about the stars, sometimes about life. Both of them saw how this kind of bonding could transform a public space into a social observatory and get people excited about science, so when their inevitable relocation after graduate school came, they wanted to spread it.

“We just had to keep doing it. It felt really right,” said O’Shea. “I felt that same joy again I’d felt at 12.”

Energized by the rush of their new experience, one of O’Shea’s friends suggested they apply for a grant from the Ottawa chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a global organization that gives microgrants around the world to projects in the arts, technology and community development, and more.

“We look for initiatives that tap into our sense of surprise and delight. They are atypical and experimental by design,” said the dean of the Awesome Foundation’s Boston chapter, Kara Brickman. “We’re interested in projects that aim to benefit the world in some innovative, important and creative way.”

Writing the Popscope grant proposal forced Dadwal and O’Shea to fine-tune their aims and focus their thinking. A top priority centered on inclusion. They wanted to get out of their comfort zones and meet people who didn’t necessarily look like them or talk like them. Popscope would be open to anyone interested, but Dadwal and O’Shea’s boots hit the ground in places a telescope in a public space would be least likely to show up.

The new organization would run on an all-volunteer basis and empower people within their own community to take on a telescope and do it on their own. This strategy would promote total sustainability. No matter how long a member lives at a certain location, if they partner with enough community members and empower them to use a telescope then someone else can take their place if they leave.

The mission, they finally decided, was three-fold with an emphasis on reaching lower-income areas and an over-arching principle of “Bringing communities together through public astronomy.” Citing studies conducted in 1997 and 2006 claiming neighborhood cohesion is associated with positive outcomes, better retention in schools and higher per capita income rates, Popscope would venture to different socio-political locations and engage those communities.

Popscope’s mission in 3 parts:

Take a geocentric trip through time to discover Popscope’s origins:
CLICK LINK: POPSCOPE STORYMAP

Show them the money

A month after submitting their proposal, they received a congratulatory letter in the mail along with a check for $1,000.

With the money, though, came pressure. A major organization believed they were up to something important and entrusted them with a hefty chunk of change. O’Shea and Dadwal made it clear with each other: they knew they had better spend it well.  Most of it went to transportation and simple marketing tactics, like a designing a logo to put on stickers and t-shirts. A big social media push was set forth. They also bought two telescopes and plotted out places to go. Then they slung their ‘scopes over their shoulders, determined to make their marks.

Popping their collars

By June, 2014, their following had gotten bigger. A small band of loyal volunteers, astronomers and enthusiast were regularly popping up with the originators, eventually becoming members.

But Dadwal and O’Shea were also recent graduates with separate opportunities springing up elsewhere. Popscope in Ottawa would need a new set of leaders for the cause, but it was also time to evolve.

“When Viva and I left, the crew in Ottawa carried the torch,” said O’Shea. “We didn’t really skip a beat, and the thought was it’s time for Popscope to expand anyway. We brought it with us.”

Dadwal moved to Baltimore in the fall to study at Johns Hopkins University. Around the same time, O’Shea got into grad school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he connected with an afterschool program to train teenagers to mentor middle-school students on how to teach basic astronomy and stargazing techniques.

The evolution continued. Other members joined, then they branched out too. Popscope was now active in five cities, including Jacksonville, Fla., and New York City.

The Ottawa chapter partnered with Canada Science and Technology Museum to hold astronomy pop-up sessions around the city. Attilla Danko is a software architect and museum volunteer working with Popscope. He said, “Anybody can be an astronomer. It’s our oldest science, and in some ways, it’s our simplest. All it takes is eyeballs making observations and asking questions. It’s where science started and it’s where a lot of future scientists and philosophers get their start.”

Telescopes, unite!

Now solo in Baltimore, Dadwal began to recruit new members to what would become the newest chapter in the Popscope family tree.

Ariel Hicks, formerly from Missouri and now a cardiovascular research assistant at Johns Hopkins, met Dadwal at a coffee shop in February 2015. Casual conversation uncovered Dadwal’s astronomical moonlighting, and Hicks knew quickly she wanted in.

“I liked the social aspect and, come on, I don’t know anybody who straight up doesn’t like astronomy. I mean who’s ever said the just hate the moon,” said Hicks working a late shift over the phone. She did a Popscope and got excited. To her, the telescope is a bridge. With it, strangers she’d otherwise never approach or talk to become less strange. There is a shared “childhood curiosity through this outlet that can benefit a community in so many ways.”

Dadwal and Hicks helped cultivate a 12-person team in the Baltimore with more added every month. Through a What’s App messaging system, they coordinate pop up sessions. Members try to arrange a session once a month.

One member, Jaz Barnett, holds Popscope viewings in Charles Village. Jess, another team member, sets his up in Federal Hill working alongside his personal non-profit events, morphing Popscope with his personal interests.

“It’s kind of cool because you can do with it what you want,” said Hicks.

Audrey Buckland, 25, had lived in Baltimore for two years when she came on board after getting ice cream with friends Dadwal and Hicks one night. “Viva brings along a telescope, and we started looking at the moon. I hadn’t done that since fourth grade,” said Buckland, “but I remember loving it.” She maintains that she is no serious astronomer, but enjoys breaking away from a demanding job as public health research associate to do public outreach at night, community astronomy and getting to know her neighbors.

“I mean the moon and planets and stuff is cool—it’s awesome—but the main draw for me was the social aspect. That’s what I really like about Popscope. It’s so not normal, yet so simple,” said Buckland.

“One evening in late April, equipped with a telescope and a splash of humility, we popped up at Lexington Market, a place locals say shows the personality of the “real” Baltimore,” said Dadwal about her and Buckland’s effort to help a city heal after its 2015 protests and riot over the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died from injuries sustained in police custody.

In its own modest way, Popscope tried to use its telescopes to help bring a divided city together. Buckland said protesters and police, more shocked at seeing “a bunch of geeks who don’t belong” looking through telescopes in Lexington Market, set aside their differences, albeit for a moment, and got excited about seeing Mars.

Dadwal shared the story about one woman taking part in the police protests who told her gestures like Popscope are what people should hear about Baltimore. Most people, she told Dadwal, do care about each other.

So far, Popscope organizers, mostly in their early 20s, are encouraged by the response to their events. The list of willing sponsors is growing too.

Working with mentors at the Johns Hopkins University’s Social Innovation Lab, an incubator for so-called “social entrepreneurs,” Dadwal, O’Shea and their cohorts seek to make Popscope a permanent fixture in city event calendars, aiming to figure out how best to use it to build a sense of community.

Urban astronomy is a thing

It can be challenging to find celestial beauty amid bright city lights. Usually, Popscopers set their telescopes on easily found targets, like the moon, though their typical instrument’s 90 millimeter magnification is strong enough to reveal Saturn’s rings or details of Mars and Venus. But while the view might be much more vibrant out in the desert and countryside, rural settings wouldn’t yield the same foot traffic the group seeks to attract. That would defeat the purpose.

“I’d rather have lots of people getting 85 percent of the view and not knowing the difference,” said Popscope volunteer and Boston Children’s Museum education liaison Leah Swinson.

Swinson worked to link Popscope to another sponsor, a non-profit group, Global Shapers, an initiative of the World Economic Forum that encourages young people by giving them funds to undertake projects to improve their communities. The decision-makers behind Global Shapers believe the initiatives they supports, like stimulating random encounters shaped through science and wonder, create thoughtful and positive future leaders, according to Swinson.

The initiative also doled out a small additional bonus added to Popscope’s $5,000 base grant to send Buckland to India where she spent a week training a group of community leaders in Mumbai how to use a telescope they bought for their village for the purpose of bringing people together. With that effort, the Popscope movement had officially gone international.

Popscope’s resources are now more than those of the average hobbyist’s. The Baltimore chapter bought three telescopes using another $1,000 grant from the Awesome Foundation.

A new chapter opens in Boston

O’Shea got his masters and spent a little time back home in Chicago figuring out his life’s next move. Not one to twiddle away in an idyllic state, O’Shea wrote another grant proposal. It was to Celestron, a big name in telescope manufacturing. Once again, he was successful, and Celestron is now a Popscope sponsor, providing brand new, state-of-the-art prosumer gear to all Popscope chapters. Done with school, O’Shea needed gainful employment, which would come in a higher-education consulting job in Boston. He brought  his telescope with him.

The telescopes from Popscope’s Boston chapter have drawn crowds around the city, in the South End after the summer’s Jazz Festival, outside Faneuil Hall and at the sidewalks of South Station.

The group has also tapped experts at places like the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston and the Science Museum for their staffs’ expertise. “They helped advise the Popscope organizers while they were getting started and collaborate with Popscope on events. They’re great to have around when space-savvy people come by with really hard questions,” said Alyssa Daniels, the Children’s Museum Science Programs Manager.

Back at the Children’s Museum, Saturn and Mars sank from view, but a bustling throng of planet-watchers marveled at the moon finally rising over the city skyline. In less than 10 minutes, the moon was out full-bodied.

“Whoa. It’s like it’s in high definition,” said a new 13-year-old viewer, enjoying her first-ever look through a telescope as she stood on a stool to reach the view-finder. “It looks real now.”

“A lot of the residents were saying how they don’t really take a moment to look up and take in the stars,” said Swinson showing a toddler to a magnetic board with colorful magnets of the planets. It was her part in helping to extend one of Popscope’s core tenets of inclusivity by engaging younger children with more simple, space-related activities.

In the closing minutes of the museum’s viewing session, O’Shea packed up his Celestron and offered a reflection. “Popscope is a vehicle for change insofar as it connects people to each other. I don’t think we’re going to solve poverty or bring about world peace, but the effort to get human beings to interact with each other and be kind to each other and talk to one another and try to understand each other under this grand setting of a night sky is critical in the process of starting positive change.”

Thinking about how Popscope can rate that sort of tangible ‘positive change’ proffered by her humble group of volunteer astronomers, Dadwal struggled when thinking about how they could ever get a handle on the metrics. She believes it poses a constant problem with funders. “When we’re asked to measure our success, it becomes difficult to measure magic or measure interactions or measure relational chemistry. I don’t know how to do that. What does it mean to have impact? At this point, we’re not sure how to measure that.”

O’Shea thought back to his waning interest in looking up when he was a kid. He thought about kids today, especially in light-polluted and economically depressed parts of the city, who don’t get the same seeds planted he got when he was their age.

“I obviously didn’t become an astronaut or anything, but I was sewn with seeds of wonder, and that had nothing but a positive impact on me. I think it’s unfortunate that might be the same for lots of boys and girls growing up under haze of light and distractions that could rob them of that,” he said.

If the folks at Popscope see their mission full realized, O’Shea shouldn’t have to worry. He, like Dadwal, will keep looking up.