Growing up, I consumed hours worth of sci-fi books and educational cartoons. I was fascinated with how the sciences collapsed into each other: biology into chemistry, chemistry into physics, physics into mathematics. 

Before bed, I would try to imagine what came after atoms and quarks, what could be hiding beyond the boundaries of scientific advancement.

That curiosity also applied to the opposite side of the scale. I wanted to know more about the unknown and how things worked beyond our planet. Over time, astronomy and physics brought philosophy. Together, they aimed to explain how everything began. 

In grade five, I asked Santa for a telescope for Christmas, and in grade ten I thought I would become an astrophysicist.

The arts rang, and I ended up majoring in English and Creative Writing, but one of my favourite electives was Professor Arkos’s ASTR 112: Stars and Galaxies.

It was the spring semester of my first year, and I was fully immersed in the life cycles of celestial bodies.

That class fuelled my creative flow for many writing classes to come. Although I didn’t pursue astronomy as a major path in my life, I wanted to follow this passion through other avenues. 

The first person I reached out to was Professor Arkos, who kindly invited me to one of his class’s observing sessions.

Coincidentally, it is World Space Week (October 4th to October 10th) as we gather on the roof of building 315. The air is brisk, and the floor is lined with small red lights to help us see, without compromising our light sensitivity.

Before we look through the telescopes, Professor Arkos leads us through a tour of the autumn sky using a green laser. It resembles a neon string tied to a distant star, being held taut by the professor’s hand.

He starts by reminding us that watching the night sky was extremely common in the past. “This is what people used to do all the time … it was dark, and once you got outside the light of the campfire, you could see thousands of stars in the sky.” 

“It’s not a surprise that they [our predecessors] came up with such incredible stories. Because the sky was full of stuff, and they wanted to know what was going on and how to remember it all.”

Professor Arkos explains that the stories behind the asterisms and constellations that we will cover are traditionally from Western and Greek cultures. “But there are stories from every Indigenous group around the world about their particular sky and how it fits into their philosophy of how the universe is.”

First, we locate Polaris, the North Star around which all the other stars rotate (from our perspective). From there, we find Cassiopeia, the “W” shaped constellation. Beside her are Andromeda, Perseus, and Pegasus.

According to the Greeks, Cassiopeia was the queen of Aethiopia. “She was very beautiful, very vain. She bragged about her beauty and compared herself to the gods; the gods did not like that. They sent a monster, of course, to ravage her country,” Professor Arkos explains.

“The only way they would be appeased is if she tied her only daughter, Andromeda, to a rock to be eaten by the monster. So like any good parent, she did that.”

Just as Andromeda is about to be eaten by the monster, the hero Perseus arrives at the scene on his Pegasus and saves the princess. And this myth captures a large portion of the constellations we were looking at.

Next we move on to the telescopes.

We have four scopes to use, the largest being an eight-inch reflector, with the eight inches referring to its primary mirror. The scope is approximately a meter in length and is propped up on a stand for us to look into it comfortably.

The session was also held only a few days after October 4, the day in 2026 when Saturn is closest to Earth. It was like a glowing pixel when I finally saw it through the eyepiece, but its signature shape was clear enough.

When Professor Arkos set the largest telescope to a higher magnification, I saw the line separating Saturn’s rings and its body.

Aside from Saturn, we also have a chance to look at the Andromeda Galaxy, the Apple Core / Dumbbell Nebula, the Ring Nebula, and the Pleiades Star Cluster. 

“Andromeda, the galaxy, is 2.5 million light-years away when you guys look at it tonight,” Professor Arkos says.

“You are seeing light that left Andromeda two and a half million years ago. It’s getting here tonight. When it left, the very first early hominids were walking around the plains of Africa.”

We take turns looking through each scope at the different space objects, and at the end of each round, Arkos has his iPad ready to show us a clearer image which he captures using the imaging scope.

After a while, I was glad to find out I wasn’t the only one joining from outside the class group. Roberto Lachance and some of his friends came by to take advantage of the available equipment. 

It turned out that the group are members of the Nanaimo Astronomy Society, and Lachance is an avid astrophotographer. He has generously shared some of his work to publish with this article.

The Nanaimo Astronomy Society (NAS) is a non-profit organization that aims to foster an educational environment for astronomy enthusiasts. They host an astronomy-related speaker nine times a year, public viewing sessions at Piper’s Lagoon Park, and educational seminars for schools.

I sat down for coffee with their president, Mike Ounsted, who has been in the role for the last 10 months. 

He explains that Dr. Bill Weller is one of the society’s founding members. Weller moved to Nanaimo in 1992 to take on a position at Malaspina College. 

He taught physics and astronomy and was introduced to a small astronomy group by a fellow faculty member. In 2004, he developed this group into a society.

The NAS started as a way to encourage curiosity in the community by providing equipment and user-friendly ways to participate. This year, the society partnered with the City of Nanaimo to make Piper’s Lagoon Park an official location for “dark-sky viewing.”

The project aims to spread awareness about urban light pollution. It has also provided concrete viewing pads in accessible areas of the park for people to set up their viewing equipment.

Dr. Bill Weller is still a part of the NAS, serving as one of the directors. On their website, his bio reads, “After retirement he spends much of his time wondering what is time, and where did it all go.”

The current president, Mike Ounsted, is an engineer by profession, but has been passionate about astronomy from a young age. “I wrote to NASA, I think, when I was seven, and they actually replied with a really cool information package, which I still have to this day.”

A part of his job at the NAS is going to schools, as well as Girl Guides and Scouts Canada programs, to teach kids about space. “They’re a riot to be with. It’s like herding cats.” I tell him that if someone like him had come to my school when I was younger, I would have been stoked.

Since astronomy didn’t get much coverage in the public school system, I held on to each piece of knowledge dearly when it did come up. 

He says, “[The kids] ask questions that make you think twice. That’s when you know you’re doing things right when you’re sparking interest, right?” Hearing that made me so glad.

We go on to talk more about astronomy, and then a bit about philosophy, and then about all the other sciences. The interconnectedness of it all fascinates us, sparking an urge to keep asking more and more questions.

The conversation travels from life on Mars, to the incredible engineering of the womb, and then to mathematics being the “language of the universe.”

It seems that this is the point of the NAS: to share and to learn. To be curious. “There’s not one person I’ve met in the astronomy club that isn’t curious, so many questions come out of it,” Ounsted shares.

I think all of this is to say that if you have a specific interest, go out and find people who can support your curiosity. There’s likely a community of like-minded people who can provide you with a lot of knowledge and resources. 

Astronomy is “a hobby that you never grow old of, and you absolutely learn something new every time,” Ounsted says. Even if it doesn’t align with your main path, your passions and hobbies deserve to be nurtured, too.

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