Jenny Greene, curriculum specialist at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, part of the American Museum of Natural History, discusses astronomy in the center's Hall of the Universe. PHOTO: Vikram Sura

Space Exerts Gravitational Pull on Educator

enny Greene is pointing to a cloudy blue swirl on one of the small computer screens attached to a portable metal cart in the Rose Center for Earth and Space. As she shows one of the volunteer educators a photo of Jupiter taken from the Hubble telescope, she instructs her about starburst activity and charged particles and Jupiter’s aurora.

Greene, 22, graduated from Yale in May with a degree in astronomy and physics. Although she plans on attending graduate school to continue those studies next year – she is deciding between the University of California-Berkeley and Harvard – for now she is the Rose Center’s curriculum specialist. The center includes the world-famous Hayden planetarium and is part of the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West and 81st Street.

Miriam Poser, a volunteer earth and space explainer at the Rose Center and one of Greene's trainees, uses the computer cart to teach museum visitors. PHOTO: Shoshana Kordova

A large portion of Greene's job entails training earth and space explainers like Miriam Poser, the 70-year-old Upper West Side resident who uses the cart to show visitors Hubble updates as well as how to find an asteroid and where in the universe Earth is situated. The museum just started using the computer cart as an educational tool for the general public two weeks ago.

The mystery of space is
part of what attracts Greene, who lives in the Bronx, to study astronomy and teach it to others. "If you’re doing biology and you’re studying an amoeba, or you’re doing particle physics, you physically have the things in front of you," she said, holding her hands up in demonstration. But astronomy, said Greene, requires a whole different methodology.

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