Exploring the skies

Imagine you are in a dark room, and you turn on a flashlight. Instantly, a dim glow will fill the room.

That is because the photons from the flashlight are moving from the lightbulb at the speed of light to your retina. When the photons hit your retina, your brain perceives it as light.

If you were to stand across a football field at night and again turn the flashlight on, the same process would happen, but because the light has to travel farther, it would take the light about one second to reach you.

So what happens when you look through a telescope at a galaxy that is 3 million light-years away? To view the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.5 million light-years away, photons have been traveling for 2.5 million years until they are filtered through the telescope and into your eye.

That means the photons from that galaxy have been traveling since before the Ice Age to reach you.

“That’s the freak-out point for a lot of people,” says Jonathan Sabin, an avid astronomer and the president of the Local Group of Deep Sky Observers.

But Sabin, who regularly exposes residents to the wonders of the galaxy, is used to the freak out. In fact, he welcomes it.

Sabin and his fellow club members regularly haul their 100-pound telescope gear to local deep-sky viewing sites hoping to share their passion for the skies.

Are constellations real?

Growing up in New York City, Sabin used to wonder if constellations really existed. He remembers seeing a few scattered stars, but the city lights were too bright to see any formations.

However, his fixation with astronomy grew at 5 years old when his parents took him to The Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He was transfixed by everything, and now at age 60, he still owns the children’s book his parents bought for him that day.

“I remember I would read that book from cover to cover for ages,” he says. “The surface of the moon, the surface of Mercury, it was all artwork to me.”

As Sabin got older, he began to get frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t see the stars he was studying. However, when he was 15, his family moved to Florida, and he finally got his chance.

While driving to their new home in Manatee County, Sabin noticed The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature had a planetarium. He began volunteering on the weekends and eventually joined the staff, where he was able to use the telescope and grow his passion.

In 1983, he got a call to join the Local Group of Deep Sky Observers, of which he has been the president for the past six years.

Exploring galaxies near and far

LGDSO, which meets several times a month, is a haven for astronomy lovers. The club meets at a site located at the Crowley Museum & Nature center, where members can view the sky without light pollution.

The three major types of deep sky objects are star clusters, galaxies and nebulae, or a cloud of gas and dust in space. However, club members also view moons and planets when conditions allow.

Club members try to meet on the Saturday around the last quarter moon and the Saturday prior to the new moon because that’s when the skies are darkest, allowing ideal viewing conditions. The optimal observing season is typically autumn through spring.

“The club is great because we get people who have different passions within astronomy who can teach others about their findings,” Sabin says.

The club draws members who have a variety of interests including charting the spectrography of stars, cosmology and astrophotography.

One such member is Andy Harrell, who joined LGDSO in 2019 but began astrophotography about 10 years ago after seeing images people had taken of Saturn and Jupiter with webcams. After learning how to align the telescope with the North Pole and keeping dew from accumulating on the lens, he says he became obsessed with the hobby.

“I have such fun taking images of the deep-sky objects — nebulas in particular,” Harrell says. “There are these enormous structures out there that look so small at the distance we sit from them, but with astrophotography, we can determine they are light-years across.”

Sean McDonald has shared Harrell’s passion for astrophotography since family gifted him a telescope for Christmas seven years ago. Although his family was “mildly amused,” McDonald was so excited when he first saw the Orion nebula that the hairs on his arms stood up.

His introductory telescope was swiftly replaced with a 16-inch Newtonian, but McDonald still wasn’t impressed with the fuzzy resolution of the deep space objects he was looking at.

“One night, I put my DSLR camera into the eyepiece holder, and bam, the fuzzy gray globs I’d studied in my eyepieces became color-rich spiral arms of galaxies or pinpoint starts in a globular cluster,” McDonald says. “All the nearly invisible nebulae I had hoped to see but couldn’t were vibrant and amazing.”

He’s spent a lot of money and time — neither of which come easy for him, he says — to invest in quality astrophotography equipment. Although it’s easy for him to get lost in the quest for equipment, he never loses site of why he got into the hobby in the first place.

“The real reason to take on all the challenges that come with astrophotography is to explore the amazing things in the immense space around our tiny little world,” McDonald says.

Ready for exploration?

Although it’s easy for club members to get lost in their own galaxies, LGDSO members want everyone to know that astronomy isn’t just for the self-proclaimed science geeks. The club, for the past 20 years, has put on Sidewalk Astronomy sessions once a month where club members set up telescopes for the general public when weather permits. Those sessions typically rotate between the Celery Fields, Robinson Preserve in West Bradenton and Riverview High School.

Typically, the events draw about 24 telescope-wielding club members and anywhere from 100 to 200 members of the public. Sabin says the sidewalk sessions allow astronomy, which can be an expensive hobby, to become accessible to everyone.

“Of all of the sciences, astronomy is probably one of the most approachable sciences for people,” Sabin says. “You know, there’s not too many microscopy groups out there doing cheek swabs and showing you what’s living in your mouth. So most people that come try it are often blown away at how accessible it is.”

Sidewalk astronomy sessions have been canceled since 2020 due to COVID-19, but Sabin hopes to restart them in the fall. Until then, Sabin hopes everyone will take a moment to appreciate the skies, whether it’s with a high-powered telescope or a pair of old binoculars lying about.

“It’s awe-inspiring,” he says. “Here we are on this little planet in the Milky Way galaxy, which is just one of the 100 billion known galaxies in the universe. It kind of makes you feel insignificant, but also it’s amazing to know that we are a part of that.”