A Starry Night

Area astronomy enthusiasts share love of dark skies

As the sun slowly sank behind the treeline, members of the Austin Astronomical Society (AAS) worked to fine tune their telescopes for a night of star gazing. Soon, people began arriving and finding their seats in the Star Theater at Pedernales Falls State Park, and outreach chair Jeff Murray encouraged attendees to try and spot the first visible star of the evening.

The June 19 star party was one of the monthly public star parties hosted by AAS, which is one of the most active regional astronomical societies in the country. The organization has been helping people enjoy the night sky since 1969.

Joe Larkin has been a member of the club since 2019, but has been interested in astronomy since he was little.

“I was always a nerdy kid. I was just interested in science and everything, and I found that I liked astronomy a lot,” Larkin said.

The telescope he brought to the event was a Dobsonian Newtonian reflector.

“This is a very, very old scope. Parts of this are probably 35 years old,” Larkin said. “Though it does come apart, it's still very large and heavy.”

Larkin said he comes out to the public star parties pretty frequently. He said he enjoys showing people stuff in the night sky.

“We're experiencing the universe for real,” Larkin said. “It's not mediated necessarily through screens, it's not a static picture, it's really there. And sometimes there's really some spectacular things up - though a lot of stuff is kind of subtle in a way.”

Larkin said that when you have a better understanding of what you’re looking at, it’s often more impressive.

“This telescope is really set up for looking at things outside the solar system, which is called deep sky observing,” Larkin said. “Much of that is things in our galaxy, like open clusters and stars and globular clusters and nebulas, and also things outside our galaxy, which would mostly be other galaxies.”

Larkin said there are different types of telescopes that show different kinds of things, but that having a great telescope isn’t required for star gazing.

“Any telescope, even binoculars, even your naked eye, when you're under dark skies looking up, there's something you can see that is actually worth looking at,” Larkin said.

He said meteors, stars, planets and sometimes even comets can be visible with the naked eye. He encouraged people to come out to a star party and learn more.

“This club does this rather often and does a very good job with it,” Larkin said. “I've been involved in amateur astronomy for a very long time and I think the Austin Astronomical Society does better for public outreach with events like this than just about any other club I've seen.”

Cindy Nance is a relatively new member of AAS, and was setting up a telescope that she got recently.

“I've been able to see this kind of telescope at work and talk to several people that use them, and decided it was a good place for me to start,” Nance said.

Nance said the people in AAS are very friendly and open to showing their telescopes and talking about what they can do. However, she also emphasized that having equipment is not required.

“You don't need to have a telescope to be into this. You just learn the night sky and you learn where things are,” Nance said.

Nance herself started with astrophotography of the Milky Way about 12 years ago. When she retired she was ready to try something new.

“There's a lot going on in the Milky Way. It's more than just the wide field view of it, so I'm interested in learning more about that,” Nance said. “There's a lot of nebulae, starforming parts of the sky. There's globular clusters where there are nurseries for new stars. You can also find supernova remnants.”

Nance said there’s a lot to see if you know where to look.

“It's just a real accessible thing for people of all ages - children, adults, seniors like me,” Nance said.

One of the more sophisticated telescopes at the event was operated by Philip Arno.

“I started in 2020, and if I’d known how complicated it was, I might have never started,” Arno said. “That said, I’m glad I did. But it’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever had to learn.”

He said part of the challenge was that it was during the pandemic, and he was trying to learn everything on YouTube, and he ran into a lot of dead ends.

“I'm actually a musician, but I have a computer background, luckily. It's very computer intensive with having to learn lots of software, which is fun for people that like to do that,” Arno said. “So, if you're a techno geek, this is an incredible hobby.”

Another AAS member who attended the star party with his telescope was Krish Arunasalam, who got interested in astronomy at age 7, while he was growing up in Sri Lanka. He was a curious kid, and his grandmother always encouraged his interests.

“There were some PVC pipes laying around, and I asked my parents to get me a few lenses and I built my own refractor telescope,” Arunasalam said. “I started looking at the moon first, and I was immediately hooked.”

Arunasalam said that because Sri Lanka is an island, the night sky was pretty pristine.

“I could see the Milky Way with my naked eye almost on a daily basis,” Arunasalam said. Arunasalam has been an AAS member for about four years, and tries to attend the public star parties as much as he can.

“There's so many curious people and so many interesting questions,” Arunasalam said. “Some folks are looking at things for the first time and it's so, so satisfying. It makes me so happy when they say, ‘Oh my God, that's Saturn, I've never seen it before!’ and things like that.”

He said these events serve a public good, and encourage people to start thinking and start asking questions. He especially enjoys seeing the interest it creates for kids, because it reminds him of how he got started.

“I hope I can be that