NASA's Curious Universe - Stargazers Welcome

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

The night sky isn’t just for experts, it belongs to all of us! And we here at NASA love to encourage people to go out and take a look. Amateur astronomer Kevin Hartnett, Hubble Social Media Lead Elizabeth Tammi, and the Astronomical Society of Greenbelt take us on a tour of the stars and share how you can join from your own backyard.

Down a windy gravel road, off the beaten path, less than 15 miles outside of Washington, D.C., and a stone's throw from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, you might just find yourself in a field full of stars. Nestle between softball fields and hiking trails, the city of Greenbelt, Maryland, has built their very own observatory. A few times a month, the Astronomical Society of Greenbelt hosts gatherings where attendees can learn about our universe.

A couple of weeks ago, our producer Christina Dana attended one of these star parties. It was a cold and cloudy night, but still dozens of people turned out for the chance to see something amazing, a traveling comet, a beautiful constellation, or even a neighboring galaxy, millions of light years away.

As soon as the clouds began to clear, the onlookers, kids and adults alike, were given a tour of the night sky, tour of the night sky. There's one there and there. Those are probably Orion. That's probably Rigel and Diedeljuice. I think that up there is Mars.

The one straight up. The observatory itself is a domed structure about the size of a shed. Up a small flight of stairs to the viewing deck, you can watch the powerful telescope zero in on targets across the universe. If everyone can stay away from the dome for just a second? Who's the star parties aren't unique to this area. Star parties aren't unique to this area. There are events like this one organized by astronomy enthusiasts around the world.

This is Astronomical Society of Greenbelt member Kevin Wilson. We can have anywhere. I mean you can see we're on a night where there's clouds and we've got, what, 20 people? out there. You can have as many as 40 to 50. On a clear night, we'll have people who come and set up their telescopes also.

And so people will be showing up there. I've got my binoculars in the car. I'm your host, Patty Boyd, and on this episode of Curious Universe, we want to take a trip to the stars from your own backyard. And encourage you to look up at night with your own tools,

with a local astronomy association, or with pictures captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to see everything the universe has to show us. So I'm Kevin Hartnett. I'm a retired emeritus from NASA, and I'm a very avid amateur astronomer, skywatcher. Kevin is one of NASA's enthusiastic amateur astronomers and worked on the Hubble mission as well as others before he retired from the agency.

Not only is he an active stargazer, but also an accomplished astrophotographer and part of an amateur organization contributing to the study of asteroids, all from his home astronomy setup. He may have more time for his hobby now that he's retired, but Kevin's interest in the stars has been with him for quite some time. Well, I was always interested in science,

so I had a rock collection, and I would study the clouds. In grade school, I had a buddy named Don. I found out he was grinding the mirror for the synch-sich reflecting telescope. And I thought that was way cool, and so I helped him with that. Ended up joining an astronomical society that had a junior division, kind of a teen division. And boy, that really got me started. The group would meet out in a field. We took our sleeping bags, and we'd be out there all night, learning the constellation,

seeing things in our telescope, playing astronomy games with one another, who's the first to find this or that. My life was changed when I saw Saturn in a telescope. And that was probably at one of those star parties. Of course, we've all seen pictures. But there's something different about seeing it with your own eye. The reality of it, the connection you feel with outer space, is a little hard to describe the ring around a ball.

Why would that be particularly beautiful? But it is. It's remarkably beautiful. It really changed me. I wanted to get more and more into it. So I started to scrap around for any telescope I could find, and I had this little tabletop refractor. It was maybe a two-and-a-quarter-inch refractor.

cheapo like you'd find at a five and dime store and the legs of it weren't long enough to use it. I had to put it up on a picnic table. I found the Andromeda galaxy in that thing one night. And I'll never forget that because I looked and looked and looked. I was still learning the constellations, but I found it. I have four sisters. They all had to come out and look.

And I was doing this in January or something. It was probably 20 to go. or 30 degrees, everybody had to get their coat on. Everybody came out. We all enjoyed the Andromeda galaxy together in this little refractor. When you imagine a nebula or galaxy, you're probably thinking of a picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has been our eyes to the skies for over 30 years now, orbiting Earth beyond our atmosphere to bring us a clear view of space. In fact, my own NASA journey began in the early days of the Hubble mission.

when I came to work on a first-generation instrument aboard this powerful space telescope. And the amazing Hubble telescope keeps calling me back. It has been my privilege to be part of the project science team on and off over the decades. Some of the clearest, most iconic images of space have come from this incredible machine. There's a team at NASA dedicated to capturing those images and sharing them with the public, encouraging people to take a look for themselves. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Tammy, and I'm the social media lead for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Mission.

I work on the Hubble team, and basically my job is to share all the amazing images and discoveries about Hubble with the general public, with the goal of getting them excited about the amazing work that Hubble does, come away with that feeling like they've learned something about our universe, and are excited to continue learning more about it. You know, as long as humanity has been around, we've always been. looking to the stars and looking at the sky and making these observations, then there were telescopes and binoculars and things like that that helped us learn more about our moon and the planets and our solar system

and even galaxies beyond our own. But it wasn't really until we had Hubble's clear view located above Earth's atmosphere and the precision and power of the observatory that showed just unprecedented clarity and detail about cosmic objects both near and far in our universe. One of the reasons Hubble makes for a great stargazing resource is that it captures images across many wavelengths of light,

including the visible light spectrum. Hubble can see an optical light, which is what our human eyes are capable of detecting. That's also exciting, especially when dealing with planets in our own solar system, for instance. I will sometimes see amateur astronomers compare images that they've taken versus images that Hubble has taken. They can get quite similar. In general, I think Hubble just has a way of inspiring people to make their own amateur astronomy observations or to just do their own research in astronomy.

The more observations of a cosmic object there is, the more that we're all going to understand it and get excited about learning more. Amateur astronomy is a great way to understand our place in the universe, but it can be a fickle hobby as well. It takes long hours late into the night and requires the cooperation. of the world around you. Every amateur astronomer is also an amateur meteorologist. We're always wondering, is it going to be clear or not?

Every clear night, I'm thinking about one or more of these portions of the hobby that I'm into. I'll look at a clear night coming up and I'll think about, is it a good night to show other people things? The planets aren't always visible.

Maybe there'll be a nice passage of the space station that night, something else special that comes along like a meteor shower or a comet or something like that. Do I take pictures of it? Do I show it to others? What do I do? There is so much to see in the night sky. It might be intimidating to think about where to start. The stargazing community is full of maps and resources to help you begin your astronomy journey. Plus, there are helpful guides, like astronomical catalogs, to point you in the direction of some beautiful things. People have logged or cataloged things that they've seen in the sky since the ancient Greeks. When Galileo turned the telescope to the heavens in the early 1600s, people began to

make notes of the things that they could see in the telescope. Maybe they couldn't see with their naked eye. These early logs have been compiled together, and a couple of these catalogs have become very helpful for amateurs. One is called the Messier Catalog. The Messier Catalog is one of the premier tools for amateur astronomy, but it came about almost by accident. French astronomer Charles Messier was looking for comets when he accidentally found a lot of other cosmic objects along the way.

But one astronomer's noise is another astronomer's signal. The Messier catalog was a catalog of nuisance objects that was kept by a Frenchman in the 1700s. He was a comet hunter, and that was very, very important back in the 1700s, because if you found a comet and you named it after your king, you got to be the head of the observatory. There's 110 entries now in this very famous catalog, the Messier catalog, that were discovered by him and some of his other colleagues.

bright objects that weren't comets that now we know are things like globular clusters or galaxies or planetary nebula. M1, the first entry, is the crab nebula and Taurus. There's a group called the Astronomical League that you can sign up with. And if you submit a log to them that shows you went out and found all 110 Messiae objects, they will send you a Messier certificate and a pin, and I was very proud to get mine. 2019. Right now, March, in the Northern Hemisphere,

is the perfect time to start looking for Messier's objects on your own in the night sky. Or if you're really committed, the perfect time to find all of them. The Messier Marathon is a very popular event for amateur astronomers and astrophotographers. The Mezier Marathon takes place in March because that's an ideal time to locate all of the objects in the Mezier catalog in a single night. It's a very challenging task, but it provides a good reason to organize a star party or a stargazing event.

Hubble has observed a lot of the objects in the Mezsche catalog, and we have them all located on our website at nassau.gov slash Hubble. If you see any images that are called M followed by a number, those are part of the Mezier catalog. The Messier catalog isn't the only resource for amateur astronomers. Messier worked in Paris, so his objects can be seen in the northern hemisphere. If you're looking for something more worldwide, you can explore the Caldwell catalog, or the Herschel 400. March is the right time for the Messier Marathon in our neck of the woods. because the night sky is constantly changing. Over the course of a night, week, month, and year,

Earth is on the move, shifting and turning so there's always something new to see. This is particularly true over the course of all four seasons. As the Earth moves around the sun, it's looking at different directions within our broader Milky Way galaxy. In the summertime, when you look out from Earth, you're looking back toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

And so there are many star clusters. You see the big band of the Milky Way right overhead. There's just hundreds and hundreds of globular clusters and nebulae. Three months earlier, in the spring, there's very few stars. It's as boring as can be looking at the sky. Hard to find any constellations, except the big dipper. but if you have a telescope, you can see galaxies. In the spring and fall, you're looking out the side of our galaxy.

You're not looking through all this dust and stuff. There's like hundreds and hundreds of galaxies. During the winter, you're looking opposite to center, so you're looking out through a thing called the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, which is filled with bright stars. So when you go out, they're just dazzling star, like diamonds, you know, on a setting of black out there looking at the Pleiades, beautiful cluster and Orion and Taurus.

So it's glorious. There's different things to look at in different seasons, and they're all special and fun, and they're fun to share, fun to catalog, just fun to enjoy. It might be intimidating to get started stargazing, But a general consensus around stargazers seems to be that the best way to get started is to find a friend to join in with you. I think it's really helpful to find a friend who shares that interest. Somebody you can do it with together.

That way you can share resources you find online. You can go out together with a star chart and figure out, wow, that's Castor, that's Pollux, that's Gemini. I never saw it before. Now I see it. You and a friend can join an astronomy club. Get yourself a good pair of binoculars. You can see a lot of the Messia objects and the Caldwell objects with binoculars. That's really the best advice I can give you.

Do it with somebody else. The Greenbelt Star Party showed that even on a cloudy night, stargazing is a group activity. And there are tons of local resources available to get you started. Here's Astronomical Society of Greenbelt member Conrad Terrell. I joined the Astronomy Club in 2013. My wife wanted to get the grandkids interested in scientific things. So she joined us as a family.

They were looking for people to help out in running the observatory. So I volunteered. You can put a lot of money into a telescope and then find out that you don't actually like actually like astronomy. You can also borrow telescopes from some clubs, and you can try it out.

That's what I did, in fact, and found out that this was kind of fun. Joining a stargazing group can be a great excuse to get out in nature, meet your neighbors, and ignite your sense of curiosity. But it can also give you a sense of perspective. We are tiny dots

in a virtually infinite universe. And depending on where you're standing, that can be really amazing. Before working with Hubble, I kind of understood how massive the universe was and found that to be staggeringly huge and it was kind of overwhelming. Now that I've been a part of the Hubble team, I think that same understanding of the incomprehensible size of the universe is almost a comfort. We've learned a lot, but there's a lot. There's still so much to learn, and it's so cool to get to be a part of this in any small way.

It's an absolute honor and privilege to get to be part of a mission that has taught us so much about our place in the universe. This is NASA's Curious Universe. This episode was written and produced by Christina Dana. Our executive producer is Katie Conan's. The Curious Universe team includes Maddie Arnold and Michaela Sosby, with support from Christian Elliott. Our theme song was composed by Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguita of System Sounds. Special thanks to Jim Gilletic, the Hubble Space Telescope team, and the Astronomical Society of Greenbelt. If you want to learn more about the Hubble Space Telescope and its spectacular views of the universe,

visit nassah.gov slash Hubble or follow along on social media at NASA Hubble on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. What do you think, Christina? Would you recommend attending a star party? I absolutely would. And I really cannot thank the Astronomical Society of Greenbelt, Conrad Terrell, and Kevin Wilson enough for letting me come out and bring my recorder. It was such a cool evening. I'll see you at the next one.