The questions are simple: How big is it? Where does it start? How was it made? How old is it?

The answers, in their uncertainty, are dumbfounding.

Perhaps that’s why, standing in a backyard in Parry Sound, amateur astronomers Lee Smith and Ken Christenson can spend hours gazing at the stars. For some inquisitive souls, there’s something comforting in knowing we’ll never have all the answers; there will always be space.
“What I enjoy most is getting lost,” said Christenson. “It’s like you’re on a boat, in the fog. You go somewhere you’ve been before, but it looks totally different.”
“The galactic workings, the final frontier… it just fascinates me, what’s out there,” said Smith. “Stargazing is a hobby that teases you with questions, entices you to go further into it.”
Stargazers are celebrating 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy, marking the 400th anniversary of the first astronomical observation through a telescope by Galileo Galilei. The International Astronomical Union and United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are calling it a year of celebration of astronomy’s contribution to society and culture with a series of regional, national and global events. In the Parry Sound/Almaguin region, home to UNESCO’s Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve, thousands arrive fleeing city lights every summer to sit under the stars and are shocked by what they see.
“They come here and get out of the car and look up and they’re stunned,” said Doug Cunningham, who helps visitors understand what they’re looking at.
Through the White Squall Paddling Centre near Parry Sound, Cunningham offers weeklong ‘Kayaking with the Stars’ excursions, hopping from island to island on Georgian Bay with a large telescope and a group of about 12 avid stargazers each summer.
“I said, you know, the time’s going to come when people aren’t just content with going for a paddle, they’re going to want an interpretation of the natural world,” he said. “We go out of Britt, to Champlain Island, Roger’s Island, Pickerel River – every night we look at wonderful, pristine night skies.”
Now in its ninth year, the tour offers paddlers, who spend most of their lives in light domes where light pollution blots out the stars, a chance to stare up from complete darkness.
“I’ll never live long enough to see all the things there are to see up there,” said Cunningham. “It’s beautiful, and there’s something in us, the quest. The root of the interest is the desire to understand the universe you live in. It’s a connection, not just an understanding – and the beauty of it all – those are the reasons to preserve it for young people.”
At his home in Lion’s Head, on the Bruce Peninsula on the west side of Georgian Bay, Cunningham works hard to preserve the night sky. He and a group of fellow astronomers have convinced the community to create two dark sky reserves – Bruce Peninsula National Park and Fathom Five National Park – which have recently been recognized by the Royal Astronomical Society.
The recognition, Cunningham said, provides “moral suasion” for residents and cottagers who might otherwise seek reassurance by lighting up the night. It could also, Cunningham hopes, convince area municipalities to consider bylaws that would preserve the night sky as new property owners arrive.
“Some of them are afraid of the night,” he said. “We didn’t want Toronto to come to the Bruce Peninsula. We wanted the people to come, but not the lights.”
Cunningham hopes a similar effort can convince the Township of The Archipelago to preserve the darkness among the 30,000 Islands.
“That would be magnificent if you could get that declared,” he said. “It would just complement what’s going on on this side of Georgian Bay.”
In North Bay, and areas surrounding it, a growing group of astronomers are making efforts of their own to preserve the night. The North Bay Astronomy Club started almost 25 years ago when Merlin Clayton put his telescope and a poster on display in Callander’s community museum.
Discovering quite a bit of interest in the simple exhibit, Clayton and a few other astronomy buffs organized a star party – a gathering of stargazers camping out with tents, binoculars and telescopes to teach one another and compare notes. About 100 people showed up – from amateurs to experts.
Now the club has about 70 members and meets the second Wednesday of each month, 10 months a year, in a North Bay schoolyard.
This year, the club will host its 19th annual Gateway to the Universe star party in Restoule Provincial Park from July 16 to 19. For $12 ($5 for kids) about 300 people from the local area, all over Ontario, Quebec, the Maritime provinces and the U.S. – rookies and avid astronomers – camp out, share a pot luck and a bonfire, swim, hike, boat and, of course, stare at the stars and “philosophize and pontificate.”
The North Bay club also spends time educating, with members visiting schools, conservation groups and clubs to cultivate excitement in the night sky. Club members hope their efforts to educate can culminate in a $1.1 million observatory on a piece of land near the village of Trout Creek.
For about 10 years the club has worked towards securing the Crown land and funding for the project, with some signs of success in the past year and a half. Joining with the Municipality of Powassan, supportive residents, upper level government and the Commanda and Area Anglers and Hunters, the club hopes to begin construction of the Powassan Public Observatory for Education as early as 2010.
The astronomy club and Anglers and Hunters have incorporated the non-profit Love Lake Space Science and Conservation Centre committee that will run the centre and the surrounding land. Although still in the planning stages, the observatory would include 10 to 16 telescopes for public use in a 30-by-60-foot building with a roof that slides open. It would also feature a 30-by-30-foot domed hall for meetings and classes.
The group finished feasibility studies and a business plan and will now start fundraising, with high hopes for financial assistance from federal and provincial governments.
“I think it’s going to bring something to the whole region,” said Kay Tod, a Magnetawan resident, and chair of the committee. “It’s a convenient and inexpensive form of entertainment for people of all ages. It’s educational and it will bring tourists to the area, which we really, really need.”
Although she’s taken on a leading role in the project’s development, Tod admits she’s among those just recently captivated by the night sky.
“So many people from Southern Ontario have never seen the stars, and so many others never really look,” she said with a laugh. “To look through a telescope and see Saturn for the first time in my life . . . I saw its moon too . . . it was just astounding. It’s wonderful, and it’s been there the whole time.”
Back in Parry Sound, Ken Christenson said he discovered astronomy in an effort to find something a man could share with his daughters, something equivalent to sharing sports with a son.
His daughter Emily, now 24, still remembers the day, after years of using binoculars, they brought home and assembled an inexpensive telescope housed in a cardboard SonoTube.
They still have it.
“I was just thinking I’ve had this half my life,” Emily said before taking a look at Saturn through the telescope. “Before we had this we had binoculars. Then we went to a star party and felt left out. I still enjoy the perspective, the way it makes you feel small, in a good way. Your problems don’t seem so significant.”
Smith, who has now graduated to a larger, state-of-the-art telescope that is calibrated onto the North Star and then electronically moves to track a spot in the constantly moving night sky, started the same way every astronomer does – with the naked eye and binoculars.
“Galileo started without a telescope,” he points out.
All astronomers suggest beginners start simple, using the naked eye to get your bearings with strong constellations like the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, the Summer Triangle, Orion and the Tea Pot and its steaming Milky Way galaxy as well as brighter stars like Sirius (the brightest) and Polaris (the North Star), around which the sky appears to rotate as the Earth turns.
Before you even hold up the binoculars, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of easily recognized constellations to spot, let alone stars, double stars, nebulae (huge clouds of ionized gases), star clusters, planets and galaxies. There are also events: comets, meteor showers, passing satellites and the space station, eclipses and solar flares.
Once you have your bearings, astronomers suggest it’s safe to invest in a telescope for a closer look without getting overwhelmed.
But whether you’re a beginner or using expensive equipment, every stargazer has the potential to become captivated – you won’t know the stars are calling you until you take a moment to look up.
“For some people, they’re just lights in the sky,” Christenson said. “I think it’s probably a smaller faction of people who see them as places. Lee and I see them as places where we will never go, but maybe someone will.”