Over the Moon

If you think astronomy means being alone in a dark, remote, and probably cold place, straining to see some smudges and dots of light through the eyepiece of a telescope, guess again.

There can be a lot more to it.

And there are hundreds of people right here in Houston who can’t wait to tell – and show – you all about it.

According to the American Museum of Natural History, astronomy is the study of “everything in the universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere,” from the (relatively) close moon to the most distant galaxies and nebulae (clouds of gas and dust).

Especially in recent years, the technology available to amateur astronomers has enabled them to see more clearly than ever before, even from their own backyards. It’s the only science hobby where amateurs “can observe the same test subjects as the professionals,” says Stephen Jones, president of the Houston Astronomical Society (HAS), which has approximately 600 members. “You can’t do a lot of amateur chemistry, and amateur nuclear physics is a bad idea,” he jokes. Sometimes, amateurs are even the first to see something new in the sky, such as a supernova (an exploding star). In 1999, for example, Brian Cudnik, a HAS member, reported the first confirmed real-time observation of a meteorite impacting the moon.

Jimmy Newland, a long-time HAS member, established the first astronomy course at Bellaire High School, where he taught for 28 years. (Bellaire’s astronomy class is now taught by Reena Chopra.) Jimmy, who has a Ph.D. in science education, developed the curriculum for the class, which is now an International Baccalaureate (IB) course taught in high schools around the world.

“I would say there are four types of amateur astronomy,” Jimmy says. “There’s the good old-fashioned, as old as telescopes, kind where you put your telescope outside and look through it without any kind of electronics or anything like that.” That’s called visual astronomy.

“Then, there’s astrophotography,” he continues, which uses specialized telescopes attached to specialized cameras to capture beautiful images of very distant objects.

EYES ON THE PRIZE Ajay Mandke with the telescope he uses to take astrophotos. (Photo: Dylan Aguilar)

Ajay Mandke, who has been doing amateur astronomy for 10 years, grew into astrophotography. “I started with a manual telescope and used star charts,” he says. “It’s how most people start. Then, when I got good at that, it was, what else can I see?” These days, Ajay’s astrophotography rig – telescope, camera, tracking mount (which keeps the telescope pointed at the object Ajay’s photographing as the earth rotates) – weighs about 140 pounds and resides in its own mini-observatory, a small structure with a retractable roof, that Ajay built himself.

When Ajay took a photo of the Heart Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia last fall, it took 25 hours of exposure time, producing almost 900 images of two minutes each. Ajay then “stacked” these images using specialized software and assigned different colors to the different wavelengths of light, some invisible to the human eye, that his camera had captured. “Astrophotography is science merging with art,” Ajay says.

“The third kind of astronomy, which is brand-new and growing rapidly,” Jimmy says, “is smart astronomy, where you’ve got a telescope that uses machine learning and sensors to figure out what it’s looking at and will gather light over time and generate a really cool astrophoto, but you don’t have to do any work.” The most popular smart telescope, which can send the images it produces to your phone or to an iPad, is the Seestar, which retails for about $500. 

FAR OUT Ajay Mandke took this photo of the Heart Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. He created the image with a specialized telescope and camera, using filters to capture specific wavelengths of light. He carefully combined over 900 images (each made with a two-minute exposure) to produce the final picture. The Heart Nebula is 7,500 light-years away from Earth and is not generally visible to the naked eye. (Photo: Ajay Mandke Backyard AstroImaging)

“The fourth kind of astronomy is citizen science,” says Jimmy. “There are ways amateur astronomers can be part of actual scientific research, just doing their hobby.” Some amateur astronomers, for example, watch what are called variable stars, which, as their name suggests, vary in brightness over time. There are far too many variable stars and far too few professional astronomers to track them all. Amateurs chart the variations in brightness of “their” variable stars, creating “light curves,” which they send to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), which shares them with professional scientists.

Jimmy is working with Bellaire High School junior, Sara Kannan, on another citizen-science project, this one involving computer science as well as astronomy. Through a national program called NITARP (NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program), Sara and Jimmy have been paired with a CalTech astronomy professor, Luisa Rebull. Basically, astronomers now have vast amounts of data from telescopes both in space and on the ground, and high-school students and their teachers can help analyze it. Sara and Jimmy’s project involves data from young stellar objects (baby stars) in a certain section of the constellation Cepheus. By compiling and graphing the data from multiple telescopes, each looking at a particular wavelength of light coming from these specific young stellar objects, citizen scientists like Sara and Jimmy can provide information that can help astronomers learn about the age of stars and their life cycles.

RISING STAR High-schooler Sara Kannan is out most clear nights with her astronomical binoculars.

Sara, 17, now runs the astronomy club at Bellaire High School and its public star parties, which she hopes to hold monthly. Last Thanksgiving, she borrowed one of the school’s telescopes to bring on a family vacation to Big Bend, renowned for its dark skies, and recently got her own pair of astronomical binoculars, which are more powerful than regular binoculars. “I’m out with them most nights, when it’s not cloudy,” she says. “The Pleiades (a star cluster) is very beautiful through binoculars. I call it the little question mark in the sky.”

There is a passion amongst amateur astronomers that can be downright poetical. For Ajay Mandke, the astrophotos he creates are a chance “to marvel at the beauty and the vastness of our shared universe” and to share that beauty with others. Joe Khalaf, who can’t remember not being fascinated by the sky and who asked for his first telescope at age five, says, “I think about that small fuzzy dot, how its light travelled years to trigger a nervous-system response in my eye to be processed by my brain.” He, also a HAS member, was involved in starting the organization’s monthly public “star parties” in Memorial Park back in 2019. Joyce Almaguer-Reisdorf, who now runs those parties, says, “You can see time. Academically, of course, I understand time, but to see it, in the changes you see in the sky, is just incredible.”

IN FOCUS Amateur astronomy often becomes a fun family activity. Ajay Mandke with his son, Aditya. (Photo: Dylan Aguilar)

Joyce and Jimmy both say astronomy is more than natural history; it’s also intimately entwined with our cultural history. It’s in our myths, our religions, our historical events. “Astronomy is one of the oldest practices of mankind,” says Jimmy. He points out that Disney’s Moana movies accurately show the characters using the methods Polynesians used to guide their journeys over the ocean to tiny islands using the stars. The characters use their hands to measure the position of the constellation called Maui’s Fish Hook (also known as Scorpius). Joyce points out that Lewis and Clark carried a telescope on their two-year plus expedition in order to determine where they were, using the stars, the moon, and the sun.

At the Memorial Park star party I attended, people were comparing the different names for the constellations they had learned growing up in different countries even as we all watched Stephen Jones’s Seestar telescope generate a bright, clear, and colorful image of a distant nebula that we otherwise would have been barely able to see.

It was pretty wonderful.

Amateur astronomers also sometimes travel to get to the best skies, unsullied by manmade light, to see stars. That’s been called astro-tourism or dark-sky tourism. Despite its “Space City” nickname (because of the Johnson Space Center), Houston, like most big cities, is not ideal for astronomy because of its light pollution.

Luckily, some of the best places in the United States for astronomy, are in Texas, particularly West Texas. In fact, Texas boasts the largest DarkSky International certified dark-sky location, the more than 15,000 square miles of the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, which encompasses not only Big Bend National Park but three entire Texas counties – Brewster, Jeff Davis, and Presidio – as well as the municipalities of Santa Elena, Ocampo, and Del Carmen across the border in Mexico.

IN FOCUS One of Ajay Mandke's astrophotos is of the Bodes Galaxy, also known as Messier 81, a spiral galaxy that is approximately 12 million light-years from Earth. (Photo: Ajay Mandke Backyard AstroImaging)

Not that you always have to travel so far. Ajay takes beautiful astrophotos from his backyard, and when Houston’s conditions aren’t good enough, “We just get in the car and drive west,” says his son, Aditya, a high-school freshman at Spring Branch Academic Institute.

Amateur astronomy can be surprisingly social. Most say the best way to start in the hobby is to join a club. Members teach each other – Joyce calls it “communal learning,” Joe calls it “shared astronomy” – and they can be a wealth of information, such as on what equipment to buy. Joyce, who went to a Memorial Park star party soon after joining HAS, says, “I remember thinking, ‘There are people at the park, looking up at the sky.’ I had no idea. I was so excited.” She advises those who think they might be interested in the hobby to “go to a star party and just be prepared to hang out and learn, talk to people about their telescopes and what they are looking at.” Now the coordinator of the Memorial Park star parties, Joyce says they have had people show up with their brand-new telescopes still in the box. “We’ll help them set them up and start showing them how to use them,” she says.

Amateur astronomers love to share their passion for their hobby even with, or maybe especially with, non-astronomers. Clubs do many “outreach” events at schools and in public places. Joe chaired HAS’s outreach and education committee for several years. He can remember his first outreach event. “It was with a Girl Scout troop,” he says. “I was nervous at first, but then I saw the girls’ enthusiasm when they looked through the telescopes.” Joe now also volunteers as a “Solar System Ambassador” for NASA, giving talks to groups about all things NASA, space, and astronomy related.

Astronomers even have a name for the impromptu star parties they hold by bringing their telescopes out to their front yards or to parks to entice other people to have a look at the sky: “sidewalk astronomy.”

When I first asked to speak to Jimmy about the subject, he replied, “I'd love to talk about amateur astronomy. With pretty much anyone.” That seems to be the common feeling among amateur astronomers, and their enthusiasm is contagious.

Right: A recent public star party in Memorial Park held by the Houston Astronomical Society. (Photo: Joyce Almaguer-Reisdorf)

Looking Good

While all the types of telescopes and other equipment and all the astronomy nomenclature can seem overwhelming at first, astronomy does not have to be a difficult – or expensive – hobby to get into.

“All you need is curiosity, an inexpensive pair of binoculars, and your smartphone,” says Jimmy Newland. Astronomy phone apps use your GPS coordinates and your phone’s built-in compass and gyroscope to figure out where in the sky you are pointing your phone. They will then produce a celestial map from your viewpoint. Sara Kannan recommends the app Stellarium. (See sidebar.)

STAR-STUDDED Jimmy Newland has tattoos of the constellations around the North Star on both his forearms.

Most amateur astronomers recommend against running out and buying equipment first thing. Do research – YouTube channels abound – and talk to people at your local clubs to determine what objects you are most interested in seeing and what equipment would be best for that. One astronomer recommended searching “What can I expect to see with” and inserting the type, size, and brand of telescope you are interested in in order to see videos of exactly that. Some astronomy clubs even have loaner programs where you can try out a telescope model before buying.

What experienced amateur astronomers do say is to avoid the inexpensive telescopes sold by general big-box retailers. “They have turned a lot of people away from the hobby,” says Joe Khalaf. He can still remember his disappointment as a five-year-old when his first telescope showed him “a little smudge” rather than the colorful and detailed images shown on the box.

Astronomy has “seasons,” when certain objects – galaxies, planets – are visible or more easily seen. This is an area where the online presence of the amateur-astronomy community, from local clubs to sites like cloudynights.com (see sidebar) can be helpful. “It’s the sort of original promise of social media – to build communities, learn, and support each other,” says Jimmy, “so, instead of scrolling and looking at what the algorithms want you to see, you engage.”

Feeling Starstruck?

Here are some resources to get a closer look (sorry) at amateur astronomy:

• American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
• American Astronomical Society
• Cloudy Nights
• Fort Bend Astronomy Club
• Houston Astronomical Society Their monthly public star parties in Memorial Park are listed on their events page and can also be found on Memorial Park’s social media, such as on Facebook and Instagram.
• Johnson Space Center Astronomical Society
• Land Sea & Sky, a popular optical shop amongst amateur astronomers located right here in Houston (1925A Richmond Ave.). Land Sea & Sky has a short video on its website explaining the main types of telescopes.
• Late Night Astronomy, one of the thousands of YouTube channels devoted to amateur astronomy
• Tips from NASA for sky watchers
• NASA’s Solar System Ambassadors program of volunteer speakers
• Night Sky Network, NASA’s nationwide coalition of amateur astronomy clubs
• NITARP, the education organization though which Jimmy Newland and Sara Kannan are doing astronomical research. 
• North Houston Astronomy Club
• Largest Facebook page for the owners of Seestar smart telescopes
• Stellarium, a phone app that helps you know what you are looking at in the night sky
• Teaching Astronomy, a Facebook page originally started by Jimmy Newland for teachers
• Texas Star Party, a week-long star party held annually in Fort Davis, Texas, featuring day-time speakers and night-time stargazing under some of the darkest skies in Texas. Next party will be held April 20-27, 2025.