ERROL Rickman, Bobby Rodriquez and Cleveland Gusters would no doubt have been among the few Jamaicans excited by news last Thursday of the discovery of an asteroid companion to Earth which Space.com writer Charles Q Choi describes as a space rock that always dances in front of Earth along its orbital path and just beyond the planet’s reach.

Rickman, Rodriquez and Gusters, you see, are executive members of the Astronomical Association of Jamaica, a relatively small group of Jamaicans — star gazers really — who are simply fascinated by the universe.

In fact, when you ask them what drives their interest in astronomy, they quickly recite the theme under which the International Astronomical Union observed 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy, ‘The Universe, Yours to Discover’.

“The universe is mind-boggling, absolutely mind-boggling,” said Gustard, the association’s assistant treasurer, in a recent interview with the Career & Education. “I think we are like Christopher Columbus trying to figure out how the universe looks.”

While it’s too early to say whether Space.com’s Choi will achieve equal historic recognition as Columbus — the Italian explorer who between the late 1400s and early 1500s sailed across the Atlantic from Spain hoping to find a trade route to India but ended up in the Caribbean and South America — the freelance journalist has certainly been making a name for himself in science journalism.

According to his report, published by Yahoo news on Thursday, the just-discovered asteroid, called 2010 TK7, is nearly 1,000 feet (300 metres) across and is currently leading the Earth by about 50 million miles (80 million kilometres).

“The asteroid is the first in a category known as Earth’s Trojans, a family of space rocks that could potentially be easier to reach than the moon, even though its member asteroids can be dozens of times more distant,” Choi reported researchers as saying. “Such asteroids, which have long been suspected, but not confirmed until now, could one day be valuable destinations for missions, especially loaded as they might be with elements rare on Earth’s surface,” they added.

It is that kind of discovery, and more, that the Astronomical Association of Jamaica is eager to share with Jamaicans — students in particular. To achieve that goal, the association has got involved in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation/International Astronomical Union (UNESCO/IAU) Galileo Teacher Training Programme.

Under that programme, teachers across the world are being trained in the effective use and transfer of astronomy tools and existing resources that are freely available on the Internet, into classroom science curricula.

According to UNESCO and the IAU, products and techniques developed by the programme through workshops, online training tools and basic education kits can be adapted to reach locations with few resources of their own, as well as computer-connected areas that can take advantage of access to robotic optical and radio telescopes, webcams, astronomy exercises, cross-disciplinary resources, image processing and digital universes (web and desktop planetariums).

The teachers, described as Galileo Ambassadors by the programme organisers, are equipped to train other teachers in these methodologies, leveraging the work begun during the International Year of Astronomy in classrooms everywhere.

“We wrote to them last year and got a euro500 grant from them to support our teacher training programme,” Rickman told Career & Education.

That training programme is complementing the association’s telescope distribution project in high schools across the island which the group strategically launched on the University of the West Indies (UWI’s) Research Day in January 2010.

According to Rickman, after receiving 400 Galileoscopes in December 2009 for the project, the association has already distributed telescopes to 60 schools in which Astro Clubs have been formed.

“What we do is suggest to them that if they have a Camera Club and a Science Club, they could use those members in the Astro Club, and when they organise a Star Party they invite all of them to come,” Rickman said, explaining that at the star parties telescopes are set up allowing students to view the galaxies, all in an effort to create more interest in astronomy.

“We had one at Campion College on April 12, Yuri’s night, at the request of the club there,” said Rickman.

Yuri’s night, Rodriquez explained, is the anniversary of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s entry into space — the first human to do so. Gagarin achieved the historic feat on April 12, 1961 by making a 108-minute orbital flight in his five-tonne spacecraft, Vostok 1.

Rickman said that more than 30 people turned out for the Star Party at Campion. He remembered one girl at the party who, after looking at the moon through a telescope, said: “I feel as if I was blind all this time.”

While the association appears satisfied with the pace at which the Astro Clubs are growing, as well as the fact that it has just over 200 people islandwide on its e-mail list, Rickman and his team really wish they can attract more than the 30 members who attend meetings on the last Tuesday each month at the UWI’s Mona campus in Kingston.

In fact, even among those 30 members, Rickman admitted “we still need to mobilise more interest”.

That, however, has not daunted the association, as Rickman and his active members have been staging star parties of sorts for tourists, particularly at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montego Bay, at the invitation of the resort’s managers.

“In 2009, we went there on Thanksgiving night, then again on Christmas night and New Year’s night. We set up telescopes on the beach and they loved it,” he said.

Rickman remembered a man who was a member of group from a Canadian bank who wrote to him praising the association for the night of star watching and stating that it was the highlight of the programme for him.

Buoyed by that and other expressions of appreciation from visitors, Rickman said he has spoken to the tourism minister and a few hotels in an effort to expand the programme.

Whether they’ll succeed or not is left to be seen, but people who enjoy looking into space are equipped with patience and a thirst for the unknown that Rickman, Rodriquez and Gustard admitted form the genesis of their passion.