"I Could See Two and a Half Million Years Back in Time With My Naked Eye": Mike Simmons, Founder of Astronomy For Equity, on Science Diplomacy Through Astronomy & Humanity's Disconnection from the Night Sky

Mike Simmons connects amateur astronomers in Iran and the US through shared passion for the cosmos. While their governments maintain tense relations, these astronomers unite through their common interest in exploration and discovery. For five decades, Simmons has worked this way, circumventing political structures to unite people through direct cosmic encounters.

The practice began outside the gate to Mount Wilson Observatory in the mountains above Los Angeles in the 1970s. Ancient light from the Andromeda galaxy reached his naked eye, photons that had traveled 2.5 million years arriving without mediation. No screens, no processing, just radiation from another galaxy hitting the human retina directly. That moment of temporal vertigo, seeing millions of years into the past, reoriented his understanding of scale and time. He has spent his life engineering similar moments for others.

Through Astronomers Without Borders and now Astronomy for Equity, he distributes eclipse glasses for pennies per student while space tourism companies charge half a million per seat. He delivers telescopes to Ukrainian schools where students alternate between tracking fathers on front lines and observing Jupiter. His networks link amateur astronomers in cities whose governments barely acknowledge each other's legitimacy.

Simmons spent decades as a biomedical researcher at UCLA, becoming a translator between doctors and PhDs who couldn't speak each other's languages. When mainframe computers made data analysis cumbersome, he taught himself Fortran rather than wait for institutional solutions. That same bridging skill now connects cultures through astronomy. He finds unfilled niches, creates new structures rather than optimizing existing ones. Where governments see borders, he sees a shared sky.

Light pollution now blocks the Milky Way for 80% of humanity. Children encounter the universe primarily through phone screens, severing the direct celestial contact that oriented human consciousness for millennia. Mount Wilson Observatory, where Hubble discovered the expanding universe, now struggles against Los Angeles's glow, a monument to both discovery and disconnection. When someone looks through a telescope at Saturn, they gain a visceral understanding of Earth's position in space. That shift in scale, he's observed across thousands of public viewing sessions, changes how people understand their place in existence.

You've connected astronomers in Iran and Iraq during some of the most tense periods in U.S.-Middle East relations. What did you learn about science diplomacy that State Department officials miss?

"Governments do diplomacy through science, and I know people in that field," Simmons begins. "But at least in the U.S., these are very small programs and not any kind of priority."

When Simmons connected amateur astronomers between nations considered enemies, he recognized borders as irrelevant to shared scientific passion. "We're all on the same planet, seeing the same sky. It doesn't matter if you step across a border that requires a passport or if you're speaking a different language."

His first trip to Iran in 1999 for a solar eclipse changed everything. As an American visiting during heightened tensions, he expected hostility. Instead, he found a vibrant young astronomy community desperate for connection. "It was perhaps the most eye-opening experience I've had in terms of learning how different the country and the people were compared to what I thought I knew."

He noticed something beyond hospitality. "When I came back to the U.S. and talked about the people in those countries, other astronomers saw them as family, not as people living in one of these evil places." These were people passionate about the same specific thing: the cosmos. "If you really want to connect people together, find a common passion. That's what people see first. The rest of it, what you look like, what religion you may or may not have, the clothes you wear, what food you eat, none of it matters."

Government science diplomacy programs focus on professional researchers who already collaborate across borders. NASA runs joint missions with space agencies of rival nations. The State Department funds scientific exchanges. But Simmons noticed something these programs miss: the professionals have no problem working together because they're working on what they're passionate about. Regular citizens might benefit more from connection through scientific passion.

"It was never the people who had a problem with each other, it was the governments," he explains. The Iranian astronomy community he encountered defied every Western stereotype. "The schools are dominated by women, not men. Universities, I mean. The sciences are overwhelmingly female. Astronomy is almost 100% female."

"There have been female vice presidents. Women own companies. Yes, they can drive cars. Iran reminded me more of the United States 50 years ago, where society in general is more conservative and women were seen as belonging more in the house, but not entirely."

He plans to return for Nowruz, the Persian New Year that starts on the vernal equinox. "Their calendar is the only one existing now that is 100% astronomical. They start the year at the moment of the vernal equinox, with the beginning of spring. This goes back thousands of years to ancient religions."

The sanctions created particular challenges, though the situation has evolved. "They get telescopes directly from China now so that's no longer a problem," Simmons notes. "When I first went there, there were fewer telescopes 8-inch or larger in private hands but there are telescope stores now." Iranian astronomers maintain their dedication despite other forms of isolation. "They have tremendous interest in science. They feel it as part of their culture."

Changed perception matters most. "When someone asks if astronomy could save the world, I would say yes. The problem is, it's not going to. But what if everybody in the world looked through a telescope? What if everybody had a chance to connect with others through a passion, then learn about them personally?"

You've operated the Zeiss telescope at Griffith Observatory where countless Angelenos first glimpsed Saturn's rings. In our age of James Webb images on smartphones, what's lost when we replace personal discovery through an eyepiece with processed pixels on screens?

"I was hired in 1976 to replace a friend running the big telescope there," Simmons recalls. The Zeiss refractor at Griffith Observatory has likely had more people look through it than any other telescope in history. Since 1935, an estimated 7 million visitors have peered through its eyepiece. "For several years, I would drive over there after work, open up the dome, and share the universe with people from around the world."

The difference between seeing an image and looking through a telescope involves more than resolution or detail. "When you look at the Hubble images or James Webb images, they're beautiful, they're detailed, but they're there, somewhere else. When you look through an eyepiece, those photons hitting your retina travel directly from that object to your eye. No cameras, no processing, no screens. It's real in a way that images never can be."

Simmons draws a parallel to The World at Night project he helped start, which photographs nightscapes with terrestrial foregrounds. "The Milky Way over different landmarks, different buildings, religious structures around the world. It shows we're on Spaceship Earth. When you see the sky over your location, the sky becomes part of here, not there."

The Griffith experience taught him something crucial about human perception. "My favorite question when doing public outreach is when I give an answer and someone asks, 'How do you know that?' I can tell them the whole story of exploration, discovery, and the scientists who figured it out. It's no different than ancient ships exploring the world. Science is exploration."

But exploration requires direct encounter. Processed images on phones, however spectacular, create distance. They're content to consume, not experiences to have. "Most people go through life and don't notice most things around them. When someone points it out, explains this is more than just a thing, there's life here, there's history here, something that adds value to that object or experience, that's expanding somebody's personal universe."

Light pollution means most humans now live where they can't see the Milky Way. "I grew up under pretty dark skies in Los Angeles, believe it or not, but it was long ago. I remember Sputnik, my first satellite in the early 1960s, Echo One, I believe. I was just fascinated by all the space exploration." The Griffith telescope provides direct contact with the cosmos that urban light pollution has eliminated. Each night, visitors queue for their turn at the eyepiece, smartphones forgotten, waiting for Saturn to reorganize their understanding of scale.

You describe yourself as someone who creates rather than manages, who finds unfilled niches. How does this drive to create new structures rather than optimize existing ones shape your approach to astronomy outreach?

"Creating things is everything to me," Simmons explains. "Not running things, but starting new things, doing things other people haven't done. I learned both in my work and in my hobbies that that was really what drove me: creation. Running things is super important and I'm very grateful for people who do that because I don't want to—but for me, creating things is it."

This pattern emerged early. As a kid, he'd help in his father's laboratories during summers. Later, when mainframe computers made data analysis cumbersome in medical research, he taught himself Fortran rather than wait for institutional solutions. "I said, well, you know, I can do that. And so I learned Fortran, and started programming the analysis that we needed, and because I was in house and could get things done much quicker, that became my full time job."

When doctors and PhDs couldn't communicate, he became a translator between their worlds. "I worked frequently between the doctors and the PhDs as a kind of translator, because neither one could speak the language of the others or understand what they were talking about. And I learned both sides of it. I've always had this desire to find a niche where others weren't doing something that was needed and fill that niche."

The approach differs from traditional institutional thinking. Rather than reform existing diplomatic channels, he creates parallel networks. Instead of lobbying for government programs, he distributes eclipse glasses for pennies. When he saw astronomy clubs operating in isolation, he created Astronomers Without Borders to connect them globally.

His path through medical research was equally unconventional. "I learned biostatistics, data management. I learned from doing the analysis what needed to be done up front in order to collect the right data, ask the right questions before you collected the data." He eventually created his own unique academic position that didn't exist before or after. "It's hard to say exactly what my position was, because I kind of made it myself."

This systematic approach to understanding complex systems would later inform his work building global astronomy networks. "This allowed me to work by myself, not get involved with whatever politics might be going on in academia, set my own schedule, and work from home much of the time. It just fit my lifestyle."

The startup world recognizes this mindset. At the New Worlds conference, he found kindred spirits among space entrepreneurs. "People in space actually do things," he observes, contrasting them with traditional astronomy conferences. Both communities explore frontiers, but through different mechanisms. Academia publishes papers. Entrepreneurs launch hardware. Simmons builds human networks that outlast both.

While you're bringing telescopes to marginalized communities, billionaires are selling $500,000 space tourism rides. How do we reconcile this cosmic inequality?

"I'm all for billionaires going to space," Simmons clarifies. "The wealthy people going to space are the pioneers because they have access to the frontier. Someone has to be first and, like the early days of flight, the wealthy are the ones who can do it. Wealthy patrons funded expeditions of ancient explorers."

"Nine out of ten space startups fail," Simmons states. "A friend at NASA who worked with SpaceX in the early days told me this. These are visionaries who aren't afraid to fail, which is an unusual but absolutely necessary trait."

The inequality is stark. Virgin Galactic charges $450,000 for minutes in space. Meanwhile, Simmons calculates costs in cents per student per year for eclipse glasses. "The eclipse glass program might be the best thing I've ever done. The ROI is huge. Pennies per student, millions reached."

"People always assume billionaires should fund programs like ours. They have mission statements and vision statements on websites saying they will. But until there's actually action happening, it's all just talk."

Yet Simmons sees a different angle. "The billionaires advancing space technology might ultimately democratize access, even if that's not their intent. SpaceX dropping launch costs makes everything cheaper. Satellite internet brings astronomy resources to remote locations. The technology trickles down, even if the wealth doesn't."

Beyond telescopes, his current focus includes what he calls "force multipliers," organizations that amplify impact across communities. "Astronomy for the blind" is another initiative, making cosmic observation accessible through non-visual means. Each program operates on a minimal budget while maximizing human connection.

He describes recent work in Ukraine, delivering telescopes to schools where students track their fathers on the front lines. "These students have lost track of their future after years of heading toward something, not knowing whether they'll be able to accomplish their dreams, whether they'll be able to stay in their own country. A telescope costs less than a single seat on Blue Origin, but it can change hundreds of lives."

The inequality reflects misplaced priorities, not resource scarcity. "We have the resources to give every child on Earth access to a telescope. We choose not to. We'd rather sell rides to space for the wealthy than bring space to everyone through astronomy."

Still, Simmons maintains pragmatic optimism. "These billionaire space ventures, even tourism, advance technology that eventually benefits everyone. But we can't wait for trickle-down astronomy. We need direct action: telescopes in schools, eclipse glasses for millions, astronomy for the blind. Make the cosmos accessible while billionaires argue about who has the bigger rocket."

Mount Wilson Observatory sits above Los Angeles's light pollution, a cathedral of astronomy drowning in the glow of the city it watches. What does Mount Wilson's struggle symbolize about humanity's relationship with the cosmos?

"Mount Wilson is where Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding," Simmons explains. The 100-inch Hooker telescope, completed in 1917, revolutionized cosmology. "This is where we learned other galaxies exist, where the Big Bang theory found its first evidence."

Now the observatory struggles against the city that grew around it. Los Angeles sprawls below, its lights washing out the very stars Mount Wilson was built to study. "In the 1920s, this was perfect darkness. Now you can barely see the Milky Way."

Simmons worked to revitalize Mount Wilson, using historic instruments to teach college students. "We would use the old instruments at Mount Wilson for college students in astronomy and physics to give them hands-on experience in a historic location. I could share with them, at the place where discoveries were made, what happened. Repeat those observations. Show how the black boxes we have as instruments today actually work."

The significance runs deeper than lost darkness. "Mount Wilson represents our disconnection from the cosmos. We built cities that block out the stars, then wonder why people feel isolated, disconnected, searching for meaning. We literally turned our backs on the universe."

But Mount Wilson also represents persistence. Despite the light pollution, research continues. Public programs draw thousands. "The observatory adapts. Solar astronomy doesn't need dark skies. Narrow-band filters cut through light pollution. We find ways to maintain that connection despite the obstacles we've created."

The struggle mirrors broader tensions. "It's like our whole relationship with science. We want the benefits—GPS, weather prediction, medical advances—but we've lost the sense of wonder that drives discovery. We consume processed science like those James Webb images on phones, but don't experience direct scientific encounters."

Simmons emphasizes historical context. "You can't know where you are unless you know how you got there. Mount Wilson shows us how we got here: through painstaking observation, careful measurement, human curiosity overcoming limitations." The observatory archives contain photographic plates from a century of observations, each one representing nights of patient watching, recording, wandering.

"Context is everything," Simmons insists. "Those plates aren't just data. They're the story of how we discovered our place in the universe. A student holding Hubble's actual plate, seeing his handwritten notes, connects them to discovery in a way no textbook can."

Preserving Mount Wilson maintains a bridge between the universe we've discovered and the city that's forgotten it exists. "Maybe that's the real symbol: an observatory still operating despite being surrounded by light pollution, still helping people see despite the glow. We adapt, persist, find ways to maintain that cosmic connection even as modern life tries to sever it."

Looking back on science diplomacy efforts, could you share your most memorable experience? What made it leave such an imprint?

"People think I travel the world like Johnny Appleseed, handing out telescopes," Simmons says. "I don't take telescopes places personally. With Ukraine, I had already sent them when I decided to go."

But his most transformative experience was that first Iran trip in 1999. "As an American, I was very reluctant. It was perhaps the most eye-opening experience I've had. I found a vibrant young astronomy community looking for help, isolated, and couldn't get telescopes or knowledge due to sanctions."

The experience shifted his approach fundamentally. "I came back feeling like the outreach I'd been doing in the United States, sharing the universe with people who had everything, could be put to better use. This was a place where they had far more interest in astronomy, perhaps because of their isolation."

The gender dynamics particularly surprised him. "Astronomy there is almost 100% female. The sciences are overwhelmingly female. This shattered every Western stereotype about Iran."

He recognized misplaced effort in his previous work. "I was sharing the universe with people in the United States who had everything. It was one more thing for them. In Iran, they had tremendous interest but no resources, no access. There's a bigger return on investment spending time helping them."

This led to a fundamental shift in approach. "I learned there are many things people are doing around the world where one little thing, maybe a telescope, maybe encouragement, maybe meeting them and talking to a government official, can have a huge impact on people already doing things."

The recent Ukraine trip provided different insights. "Meeting teachers and students, learning what it's like living in a war zone. These students weren't constantly worried about their own safety, but they were constantly worried about their fathers at the front. They had lost track of their future."

The contrast between his various diplomatic missions reveals a pattern. "Whether Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, or anywhere else, the passion for astronomy transcends the political situation. But the impact you can have varies enormously based on existing resources and access."

"Many people here felt like by helping young people in Iran, we're helping the enemy," he reflects. "They don't make that distinction between people and government. But the people in Iran and most countries I've visited immediately make that distinction. When they learn you're American: 'We love America, we love Americans, we love your culture. We don't like your government.'"

These experiences demonstrated how media and politics distort reality and how science can bridge seemingly unbridgeable divides. The shared passion for cosmos among amateur astronomers consistently overcomes national boundaries and political tensions.

Author's Analysis

Consider the first Mars colony declaring independence in 2055. The declaration comes not through revolution but through a scheduled telescope viewing session. Chinese, American, Indian, and Russian colonists gather around a modest refractor pointed at Earth. Through the eyepiece, their former nations appear as a pale blue dot, national boundaries invisible, political divisions meaningless at 140 million miles.

This scenario reflects what Mike Simmons has observed for five decades. A young woman in Tehran meticulously logs Jupiter's rotation. They get telescopes directly from China now, so access is no longer the problem it once was. When Simmons first went there, there were fewer telescopes 8-inch or larger in private hands, but there are telescope stores now. Her data matches observations from a teenager in Tel Aviv, whose government considers Iran an existential threat. They publish jointly in amateur astronomy forums, usernames obscuring nationalities, data speaking its universal language. Neither mentions politics. Both understand they're mapping the same cosmos from the same spinning rock.

Today, somewhere in Ukraine, a student checks her phone for her father's location on the front lines, then swings a donated telescope toward Saturn. The rings appear crisp in the eyepiece, photons completing their 746-million-mile journey to reach her retina directly. For those minutes, she exists simultaneously in a war zone and in the solar system, holding both realities without contradiction. The telescope cost less than one artillery shell.

The infrastructure for citizen-based space diplomacy already exists. Radio telescopes can be built from satellite dishes. Smartphones can capture lunar craters. Software for asteroid detection runs on laptops. The question becomes whether we organize this capacity for separation or connection. Seven million people have looked through the Griffith Observatory telescope since 1935, each experiencing what Simmons felt in the California mountains when Andromeda's ancient light reached his naked eye. That direct contact, unmediated by screens or politics, reorganizes human perspective in ways no treaty can replicate.

Mount Wilson watches Los Angeles from above the light pollution that drowns out stars for millions below. The city's glow, visible from space, marks humanity's success at conquering darkness and its failure to remember we live in a galaxy. Children grow up knowing Mars only through screens, while the actual planet crosses their sky unseen. We've created a civilization that blocks its own view of the universe it inhabits.

What changes if every school receives a telescope before every military receives another satellite? If eclipse glasses reaching millions of students matter more than billionaire space tourism reaching dozens? If we treat cosmic observation as essential infrastructure, like roads or internet, rather than luxury or afterthought?

The space economy races toward a trillion dollars while most humans can't see the Milky Way. We're preparing to mine asteroids while forgetting to look at stars. The question isn't whether we'll expand into space, but whether we'll carry our divisions there or leave them behind in the gravity well. Every telescope functions as both a time machine and empathy engine. When you see Saturn, you see it as it was 72 minutes ago. When you see Andromeda, you see it as it was 2.5 million years ago. This temporal displacement forces perspective shifts that no political argument can achieve.

Simmons' networks demonstrate what's possible when we prioritize shared wonder over national interest. Amateur astronomers in hostile nations share data while their leaders exchange threats. Iranian women dominate astronomy departments, confounding Western assumptions. Ukrainian students find momentary transcendence through eyepieces while war continues around them. These aren't inspirational anecdotes but data points about human behavior when given access to cosmic scale.

The future of space diplomacy may depend less on government treaties and more on citizen networks united by direct cosmic encounter. As humanity expands beyond Earth, the question becomes whether we export our divisions or discover, as those hypothetical Mars colonists might, that national boundaries become meaningless when viewed from sufficient distance. The infrastructure for this shift already exists in every backyard telescope, every astronomy club, every moment someone looks up and experiences the vertigo of cosmic scale. What remains is the choice to use it.

About Mike Simmons

Mike Simmons has been an astronomy outreach leader and organizer for 50 years. Meeting astronomy and space enthusiasts in less-visited countries showed Mike that astronomy is a universal interest that transcends cultural differences. He founded Astronomers Without Borders in 2006 to unite astronomy and space enthusiasts worldwide to create community, understanding, and empathy through their common passion for astronomy. During the International Year of Astronomy 2009, Mike led a program that engaged a million people observing through telescopes in one night worldwide.

Mike founded his latest initiative, Astronomy for Equity, to address issues of diversity and inclusion using astronomy and space. He is also an Affiliate Research Scientist at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, a founding member of the Overview Institute, and a member of the board of directors of DarkSky International. He serves on the International Astronomical Union's Executive Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion and the Outreach Committee of the African Astronomical Society.

Mike is a regular speaker in the US and abroad on how astronomy is used to improve international relations, reduce inequity, and provide opportunities for marginalized communities. Mike has received numerous awards for his work in the field, including having Minor Planet Simmons (22294) named in his honor in 2003. He was also awarded the prestigious 2014 Gabrielle and Camille Flammarion Prize from the Société Astronomique de France (SAF) for "setting a worldwide example that astronomy does transcend political and cultural borders."

Mike is retired from a career as a biomedical researcher at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He lives in the mountains of Southern California, USA with his wife.

For more information about Astronomy for Equity and their programs distributing telescopes and eclipse glasses worldwide, visit www.astro4equity.org