Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2020

48 MARCH-APRIL 2020 OUR EXPERIENCES For us, as amateur astronomers, it had been indisputable progress. At the same time, for the curious accustomed to the vast quanti- ties of images of the sky on the Internet and the emerging social networks of that time, it was only a blur on the computer screen. This situation made us think “something new has been adding to the pas- sion for the stars.” On the one hand, observational tech- nology would un- doubtedly have of- fered us surprising resources but, on the other hand, our role as communica- tors had to face the new times and new challenges. Perhaps there is a tendency to think that, due to new technologies, young people might lose interest in astronomy. And, in part, this makes sense, since not only does it cost more and more to look at the sky and see the stars in it, but young people now spend more time glued to the screens of their mobile phones than on the balcony of their home to have fun looking at the Moon with binoculars, as perhaps most of us did as children. Leaving aside the problem of light pollution (which certainly influences and must be seriously addressed from a governmental point of view, with effective measures to illumi- nate correctly), the emergence of new technologies and the digitali- zation of the media should not be such a problem to drive young peo- ple away from astronomy and sci- ence in general. We believe that we have not been able to channel the by impressive rings. Until then, Saturn had only been a ball ringed in the image of an eyepiece. We were amazed by the new re- source, and what we saw was unthinkable until then. Several passersby, probably science students, joined our group and came to snoop around. To our surprise, not only were they *not* amazed by the images of the planet and its rings, but they com- mented that the images were very poor compared to what they had seen in the books and, most likely, on the Internet.