Amazing Astronomer | Ibrahim Amiri

Astronomer Ibrahim Amiri, 30, teaches a new generation to see hope and promise in the study of the heavens.

When Amiri was only six, he saw Hale-Bopp comet streak across the night sky over a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, and he was hooked.

He is self taught astronomer, and built his own 100mm refractor telescope in 2007. In the summer of 2015, the Consortium for Undergraduate Research in Astronomy, with Kenyon College in Ohio, sponsored him to visit the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and spent time Snow Solar Telescope on Mt. Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Amiri’s telescope is an example of the ingenuity of young Afghans who have overcome war, economic uncertainty and a struggling education system to pursue their dreams.

In addition to his day job as a translator and language tutor, has begun teaching a new generation of young Afghans about the heavens. He has joined a group of fellow amateur astronomers and helped develop a textbook for school-age children. The group hopes it will replace the more outdated texts in the country’s schools.

The astronomers also recently purchased a mobile planetarium for the rooftop of their offices in west Kabul, hoping to pique the interests of schoolchildren, boys and girls, in astronomy.

Amiri believes that for a nation constantly caught in conflict, the growth of astronomy could give young people something universal to study, helping to deter those vulnerable to the propaganda of insurgents.

More on Ibrahim Amiri:

• Los Angeles Times
• Newsweek
• Afghanistan Astronomy Association

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