This article highlights the need for more public observatories and astronomy education, as urbanization and light pollution have reduced people’s access to the stars. The experience of stargazing is presented as an important opportunity to foster scientific curiosity, promote emotional well-being and self-reflection, and restore a sense of innocence.
We’ve all sung the word “star” in a song at some point in our lives. Stars are an integral part of the beautiful songs we hear in our daily lives. This is also true in other literature and art. Vincent van Gogh emphasized the stars in his painting The Starry Night (1888-1889), where he emphasized the beauty of the night landscape. From ancient times to the present, stars have been used to symbolize romance, beauty, and eternity, not only in song lyrics, but also in literature, art, and everyday design.
However, if you ask around, not many people actually know the beauty of stars that can be felt in songs. This was the case when I gave a seminar on astronomy clubs to middle school students as part of a university campus tour program. At the beginning of the seminar, I asked the students to raise their hands if they had ever seen the Milky Way, and out of a hundred people, only two or three raised their hands. Only a dozen had ever been to an observatory. The students were fascinated by the pictures of stars on the PPT screen, but it was very sad for me to realize that they had never really seen a star. I realized that so many people have only experienced stars as something other than stars.
Just a few decades ago, people were familiar with the stars, but this is no longer the case. The first reason is light pollution due to high rates of urbanization. As urbanization increases, the lights of cities scatter across the sky, causing the night sky to become as yellow and bright as city streetlights.
The second reason is that despite the fact that the stars are not easily accessible in cities, there is no environment for people to experience the stars and the universe. This reality is evident in the number and scale of citizen observatories in Korea. Korea only started building public observatories in 2001, and currently there are only about 10, with only a few hundred thousand visitors per year. Astronomy education in schools is also poor. Textbooks teach about types of telescopes, how to use them, and constellations, but few schools have the equipment or organization to provide hands-on observatories.
By comparison, the Griffith Observatory in downtown Los Angeles (LA), USA, attracts more than 2.5 million visitors every year despite being built in the 1930s. Japan has the most observatories in the world, with hundreds of citizen observatories spread across the country, and in China, it’s not uncommon to find schools with rooftop observatories. There is even an observatory in downtown Beijing that is the only one in the world to display ancient astronomical artifacts. As you can see, space-advanced countries have been building observatories for a long time, giving their citizens the opportunity to get in touch with the stars and the universe.
So why should we build civic observatories if urbanization has made people less interested in the stars? According to experts, observing the heavens through an observatory not only fosters scientific curiosity in children, but it also serves as a scientific, cultural, and leisure facility that can help promote the region. And most importantly, more observatories and more astronomy programs can reignite people’s interest in the stars. It gets people interested in the night sky, which they may not have paid attention to before, and encourages them to look for stars on their own.
Why is it important to look at the stars? I believe the answer lies in the emotional experience they provide.
Have you ever laid in a cabin in the mountains, or on a hillside, late at night and watched the stars? A night sky filled with starlight is beautiful. It’s no coincidence that stars often appear in song lyrics. The Milky Way is so vast and beautiful that you can forget about the rest of the world when you look at the hundreds of millions of stars in the sky. It is nature’s greatest masterpiece, from its jaw-dropping scale and vastness, to the shapes of the constellations and the flow of the Milky Way, to the sparkling details of each individual star. Its beauty is unlike anything we’re used to seeing, and it touches us in a pure and deep way. It’s like falling in love at first sight.
When I lie still and get used to the night sky, my excitement subsides and my mind wanders. Those beautiful stars are infinitely far away from me. In that infinite distance, the stars are always shining brightly, regardless of what is happening on Earth. They are always there, looking down on us, sending us light without any conditions. I, as a human being, can be selfish and inconsistent depending on the situation, but the stars are always impartial, showering their beauty on everyone. This idealized existence of the stars is awe-inspiring, inspires self-reflection and humility, and purifies the heart.
After feeling so much from the stars, one naturally thinks of the people of the past. In the past, the stars must have been much more visible, and how many thoughts did people in the past think about the stars at night? On dark nights, some people might not have been able to sleep, so they went out for some air and looked at the stars. They might have gone about their day with gratitude, content just to be able to see the stars. Perhaps the reason people in the past were more innocent than people today is that they had access to the beautiful night sky every day.
Nowadays, the news is filled with horrifying events such as murders, sexual assaults, suicides, and terrorism, and society pushes us to be busy, to think outside the box, and to succeed. In such a harsh society, the stars can be a good solution to bring people back to their innocence. To this end, we need to expand astronomical facilities, increase opportunities for students to see the stars for themselves, make visiting an observatory less of a challenge, and create an environment where more people can see and feel the stars for themselves. It would also be a good idea to create astronomical tourist destinations in the suburbs so that people who want to see the Milky Way can easily find them.
In this article, we talked about the emotional nature of stars and the need for more citizen observatories. In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s ‘ The Little Prince,’ there is a line. “Just looking at the stars can make a person happy!” I hope that more people will look at the stars and create a happier society. If you are one of those people who are tired of your daily routine, why not take a moment to look up at the sky?
