By Lisa Coalwell
Standing alone in the dark, I could easily feel overwhelmed by the vast, velvet-black night sky. It is, after all, endless. It’s filled with more galaxies and nebulae and black holes than my mind can comprehend. The starlight I see tonight began its journey before I was born. The closest star, other than our own sun, lies not within reach of even an entire lifetime of travel.
Photo by Dan Laszlo
Yet, that same sky seems as familiar to me as my own backyard. I look up and see the same stars I saw last night, ones I will see again tomorrow night (clouds not withstanding). I know the phase of the moon and how it changes slightly each night. In the midst of a million stars, I can pick out constellations like old friends in a crowd—the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Leo the Lion.
I did not come to this understanding by myself. I was guided there by a group of dedicated amateur astronomers known collectively as the Northern Colorado Astronomical Society.
Accessing the Universe
The Northern Colorado Astronomical Society (NCAS) is just one of many organizations across the country dedicated to helping those of the lay public better understand that vast natural resource we call our universe.
The local group may be small in number, with about 40 regular members, but it’s powerful in its reach, hosting two or more public stargazing opportunities each month, from events at area schools to backcountry star watches at Rocky Mountain National Park.
“Amateur astronomy clubs provide easy ‘access’ to the universe,” said Greg Halac, outreach coordinator and Web editor for the NCAS. Halac, an engineer who lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, is one of about a dozen club volunteers who set up amazingly large and complex telescopes for public stargazing events in museum parking lots, school playgrounds, and high mountain meadows.
“Trying to start out in astronomy on your own will inevitably lead to frustration and wasted money, and discourage people who really are interested in the subject,” Halac explained.
He’s been there.
“My wife gave me an eight-inch telescope, and I had only used it under the light-polluted skies of Fort Collins,” he explained. “I joined a friend for ‘Weekend Under the Stars’ in Foxpark, Wyoming, in 2002 and was awestruck by the gorgeously dark skies.” At that event, Halac took what he calls a “lucky” photo that ended up on the NCAS website, and joined the club at its next meeting.
Halac now uses two large and powerful telescopes (a 17.5-inch Dobsonian and an eight-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain), as well as a Coronado Personal Solar Telescope, in his volunteer work with the NCAS.
“It is incredibly rewarding to see and hear the reaction of both kids and adults the first time they look through a good telescope,” said Halac. “To most people, seeing the object live is a truly memorable experience…. It is a completely different experience than looking at a photo.”
That “live” experience can lead to a deeper understanding of not only space, but our own Earth, said Jon Caldwell, NCAS treasurer. He believes it is the club’s role “to raise the public’s awareness about what’s out there, so they can appreciate more what’s here on Earth.”
“We should understand the universe better so we can realize how isolated we are in it,” he explained. “This Earth is all we’ve got.”
NCAS vice president Dan Laszlo agreed. “We have such a comfortable little planet,” said the Fort Collins allergy physician. “Looking beyond it is tremendously enriching in terms of the extremes that are out there—the distances, the temperature, the time scale, the cosmic speed limit of light speed.”
Robert Michael, the club’s president, sees a need for amateur astronomers to reach out to the public not just to share a passion, but to help people see the bigger picture.
Dan Laszlo shares his knowledge of the night skies during an early March astronomy night at Big Thompson Elementary School in Loveland, Colorado. Photo by Julie Patton.
He cited a quote from Raymond Alf, a well-known paleontologist and teacher at the Webb School of California, a preparatory school Michael attended in Claremont as a high schooler.
“This quote is as fresh today as it was 50 years ago when I first heard it,” said Michael. “Raymond Alf said, ‘Our view of the human scene becomes narrow, unillumined, and passionate if we do not rise above its immediate urgencies and see it in its cosmic roots and background.’”
To explain those “cosmic roots,” club members work “to convey both extremes of the obvious and the subtle,” said Laszlo. He’s direct with a child: “Yes, you are seeing spiral arms of a galaxy and it has a black hole in the center,” while he’ll prompt an adult with a question: “Isn’t it amazing how tortured the moon looks?”
Reaching Back to Reach Out
One of the reasons NCAS members say they can relate so well to all ages is that they remember how their own interests began, long ago.
“I was a child of the space age and remember arguing with my kindergarten teacher about a mission,” said Laszlo. “She was right that time.”
Later, his parents “gave in” and bought him a $200 telescope when he was in junior high in Cedar Springs, Michigan.
“I recall my first look at Saturn with that scope,” he said. Then, “I read every local library astronomy book and Sky and Telescope magazine for years…. I did lots of reading, because of the cloudy weeks, especially in winter.”
Like Laszlo, Michael also got hooked on astronomy early in life, as he grew up in Los Angeles. His parents took him to the nearby Griffith Observatory when he was about six years old.
“It blew my mind,” said Michael, a consulting geologist now living in Fort Collins. “I was interested in astronomy anyway, but that trip was the clincher.”
Caldwell’s passion for astronomy came not as much from the stars, but from the hardware. He began building his own stargazing equipment in eighth grade (“many, many years ago”) when he needed a science project, and found a book on making telescopes.
During starwatches, Caldwell, a retired mechanical engineer, now uses a 12.5-inch reflecting telescope with a mirror he made himself. His best moments, he said, are when “someone takes a look in the eyepiece and says, ‘Oh, wow!’”
“First-time viewers tend to gasp with the close-up view of the moon or Saturn,” Laszlo added. One of his most memorable moments, however, came as he helped a crowd observe a man-made object, rather than a natural one. He recalled an event that was to start after the landing of a Space Shuttle: “The landing was delayed, unknown to me. The crowd gave a ‘whoa’ as a bright little comet with a wispy white tail drifted almost overhead —it was the delayed shuttle, and a cloud from a water release—a really unearthly sight.”
From the Public’s Perspective
When Michigan resident Debi Rom and her family moved to Loveland, Colorado, they noticed that they were closer to the sky. “We could see the stars in different ways than in the Midwest,” she said.
Rom, an elementary-school faculty assistant, decided to attend one of the NCAS starwatches at an area open space during last winter’s holiday break for “something different to do.” Although the evening was bone-chilling cold, it was well worth it, said Rom.
“The people in that group are so eager to share their passion and the information they’ve gathered over the years,” she explained. “They were as willing to share information as they were to tote around those big telescopes; it’s not like they just show up with lawn chairs and start talking!”
Attorney-by-day and astronomer-by-night Robert Grover prepares his telescope for a public viewing at the Loveland school. Photo by Julie Patton.
They were so helpful, in fact, Rom said, that when she wished aloud that she’d dressed more appropriately for the weather that night, one of the members offered her a hat from his car. “They were so accommodating,” she explained. “I felt like I’d known them for a long time. I’m now planning on attending more of their events this summer.”
I, too, have benefited from the NCAS universe of knowledge. Both my own children and my students have attended stargazing events at my urging, all of them coming away chattering about what they’d experienced. My husband and I attended one of the Rocky Mountain National Park star parties a few summers ago, where we learned more about particular stars and certain constellations than I had in years of preparing astronomy lesson plans.
And, best of all, I received a phone call one day from Laszlo, who had worked with my students through night observations, asking if I had any special plans for the kids that day. Thinking of all the lesson plans I’d made, I asked him what he had in mind.
“The sunspot activity is amazing today,” he replied, offering to bring his solar scope to the school and introduce my team of more than 90 students to sun gazing. How could I say no? The sixth graders learned a lesson that day I could never have planned for them, and one that will stick with them for years.
So now, as I study the night sky and introduce it to an even younger generation of children in my new role as an elementary-school teacher, I thank those volunteers who help the rest of us make some sense of our universe.
Embracing the Universe
Now, for me and others touched by NCAS members, the night sky beckons, and we can appreciate its wonders: A thin crescent moon hanging above the horizon, grinning like Alice’s Cheshire Cat; the Milky Way, filled with unknown galaxies and deep-space objects, stretching across the sky like a billowy, colorless rainbow; Mars glowing red among the silver stars.
We take a break from our hectic lives, turn off the TV, and walk outside, welcoming the dark.
Constellations
“Be humble, for you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.”
—Serbian Proverb
The constellations scattered around the night sky can connect us across time and space to ancestors who traced these patterns in the stars.
We can learn more about the Navajo tribe, for example, when we look at Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper. Those two star patterns are called “circumpolar” constellations—for people living in the northern latitudes, they seem to revolve around the North Star, and can be seen year-round.
The Navajo saw the Big Dipper as First Man, and Cassiopeia as First Woman. The two “walk” together around the Campfire of the North, a constellation that includes Polaris, the North Star. The Navajo believed this mix of constellations established a law of fidelity—one man, one woman, one home fire.
The stars also helped the Navajo regulate their hunting seasons. Near a constellation they called Long Sash (Orion to the Greeks), the Navajo saw a rabbit leaving four tracks behind it. This constellation becomes visible in late fall, and the open end of the rabbit’s tracks appear to point toward the earth. The Navajo believed this signaled the start of hunting season, which lasted until the constellation gradually moved across the sky, and “set” during the spring and early summer. The open ends of the tracks then appeared to point away from the earth, signaling mating season and the end of the hunt.
Information courtesy of the Star Lab Native American Mythology guide.
Astronomy Clubs
For more information on astronomy clubs in your area, go to:
Night Sky Network
The Astronomical League
Dr. Laszlo recommends two sites “for a daily taste of astronomy”:
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Space Weather
And, he added, for “a local clearinghouse for events and observing information,” turn to your local astronomy club website. For instance, the Northern Colorado Astronomical Society site address is www.ncastro.org.
Lisa Coalwell teaches at Big Thompson Elementary School in Loveland, Colorado. She served as an education ranger last summer in Rocky Mountain National Park through the Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program.
