Look to the stars with a sense of curiosity

Those who know me understand my lifelong passion for looking to the stars and the myriad of celestial wonders hidden within the nighttime skies.

A lot of that began when I was just eight years old. Music featuring Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons started to play on the living room stereo as I opened up my dad’s world almanac to the pages containing the map of the known solar system that also featured black and white photos taken of the planets just within visual range of the telescopes focusing on them.

Within a short amount of time, I committed to memory the order the planets appeared in relation to the Sun as well as the moons orbiting all but two of them. Of course, back then, Pluto was still considered a planet before it got demoted many years later, but I digress.

Jump ahead a few years when I took part in an outdoor astronomy lesson led by my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Jenny Johns. I still remember her pointing toward the constellation Leo and showing us how easy it was to pick it out among the other collections of stars within that part of the sky.

Her lesson that night showed the pattern of stars making up the “head” of the lion looked like a reverse question mark in the sky. It’s that one lesson I shared with others over the years.

My next major step into astronomy came while my wife and I lived in Great Falls, Mont., shortly after we got married. My supervisor allowed me to borrow his telescope one night, which I set up in the area outside of the back porch of our home.

Looking to the sky, one star seemed to tug at my sense of curiosity. Aiming the spotting scope toward it, I managed to lock the telescope in place and took a look. What I saw was something I hadn’t expected: A point of light with a halo surrounding it…

A planet known as Saturn.

That one moment in time simply left me with a sense of happiness I never saw coming. After all, I figured I was going to simply look at a star. The fact I located a planet out of sheer luck was a welcome bonus.

However, my passion for astronomy took its biggest step forward while my family and I were stationed at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan. We just came home after eating dinner at the base’s NCO club and parked our car in front of our home in the base housing area.

Stepping out of the car, my oldest daughter, Nichole, looked to the sky. Something definitely caught her attention.

“Dad, what is that?” I looked and saw her pointing upward.

“It’s a star, honey,” I replied.

“Uh huh… which one?”

She definitely caught me off guard. While I knew some of the basic constellations, my knowledge of the names of the major stars locked within each of them was a bit rusty.

But I felt I needed to give my daughter an answer. It began a few days later when my family went to a book fair at the elementary school on base. Call it coincidence or perhaps it was fate calling me, but my eyes locked onto a paperback book featuring maps of the nighttime sky that I quickly bought.

I then spent months using the maps inside that book to help guide my eyes to discovering the multitude of constellations that changed from month to month as Earth made its yearly journey around the Sun. I then connected with some ways to help memorize where certain stars were located using the more familiar stars to help navigate to others locked away in neighboring constellations.

When my family returned to the United States, I spent time seeing some of the deep-sky objects that often remain out of plain sight that require certain tools to spot them. The first one I discovered required me to follow two stars located next to Pegasus the unicorn. Borrowing a pair of binoculars from my wife’s friends, I passed both stars before looking upward.

There it was: The Andromeda Galaxy – a collection of more than 200 million stars located 2.5 million light years from Earth. On the galactic scale, it’s the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. The next major step I took happened after my family and I moved to Mountain Home as I finished up my 25 year career in the Air Force. As luck had it, I got my hands on a more reliable telescope with a computer tracking system that made it much easier to track different galaxies as well as star clusters and nebulae within our own galaxy.

My knowledge of the nighttime sky continued to grow and became something I enjoy sharing with others.

I still remember one night about a year ago when I started tracking Saturn in the evening sky. As I locked the planet in the telescope’s eyepiece, I heard a child riding his bike past my family’s house.

“Hey. I’m looking at Saturn right now, if you’d like to take a look,” I said.

The child immediately locked up the brakes on his bike and darted toward the telescope.

Giving him a quick lesson on how to best look through the eyepiece, he stepped up and took a look. It took that youngster just a few seconds before he realized that one point of light in the southern sky was not a star but actually a planet.

Over the years, my knowledge of astronomy continued to grow as I invested time to study the sky throughout the year. I then devoted time to share that knowledge with families in the Mountain Home area when I taught basic astronomy classes through the city parks and recreation department.

My goal was simple: Inspire today’s generation to take an active interest in the nighttime sky. After all, it’s only a matter of a couple of years before humanity once again steps foot on the Moon for the first time since December 1972.

Then there are those special times when I enjoy taking time to hold impromptu lessons while I look at the nighttime sky while I’m home. The most recent happened just a couple of days ago when Comet ATLAS made its appearance in the western sky.

While it took a bit longer than expected for my eyes to adjust to the darkness after sunset, I navigated my focus to the area between Venus and the star Arcturus. My eyes saw a glimmer of light about halfway between both points of light before…

I got it!

A thin wisp of light led my eyes to the heart of the comet itself. Granted, I needed to step somewhere away from the street lights and other obstacles, but I definitely saw the same thing people were flooding social media sites with the images they captured of that comet.

Immediately, I ran into the house telling my family that I found the comet. I then ran next door to alert my neighbors of what I found. My neighbor’s children heard my voice and immediately darted outside looking for the comet. It took them just a few brief seconds before they also found it.

In just one brief moment, I feel I helped rewrite their knowledge of the universe. It’s a legacy I hope they share with their friends.

– Brian S. Orban