The stars belong to everyone, and that is exactly what the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit (SBAU) club is proving to our community. The club’s mission is to inform its members and the public about astronomical occurrences all over Santa Barbara County. They host a variety of astronomy events each month that are free to the public. Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH), the SBAU holds a “Star Party” on the second Saturday of each month at the Palmer Observatory located in the outside portion of the museum. Members bring a wide variety of refracting, reflecting, and compound telescopes to share with guests. The public is free to walk through and observe the multitude of telescopes set up, focused on celestial sights such as notable stars, planets, and nebulae. The members operating the telescopes are commonly astronomy enthusiasts, and are happy to answer any questions observers may have about the night sky and what they are looking at. Furthermore, the SBAU hosts another public telescope viewing at the Keck Observatory located at Westmont College every third Saturday of the month. They also hold stargazing events on the first Tuesday of each month at Camino Real Marketplace.
However, light pollution is always going to pose an issue when doing any sort of celestial observation in a city. That’s why the SBAU holds meetings in more remote sites too, such as Cauchuma Lake, Carpinteria State Beach, and Refugio State Beach, in order to see stars and planets more clearly. In addition to stargazing, the SBAU has monthly meetings for its members that feature a platinum show at the SBMNH and an earth science-focused guest speaker. Santa Barbara City College Astronomy and Astrophysics professor Dr. Sean Kelly remarked on the talks, “It’s not supposed to be super advanced, although many of our members come from pretty technologically advanced backgrounds – they’re engineers, scientists – but they come from all different areas. Some of them have a lot of expertise, some have learned along the way, and we just love sharing space with people, and love sharing the knowledge.”
The SBAU is also dedicated to performing outreach in the community. Their services are free for any kind of educational purposes, and members often visit and bring telescopes to local schools to educate children about Astronomy. Outreach Coordinator of the SBAU, Chuck McPartlin, explained his passion behind getting people excited about the stars, “It’s a way to introduce people to what you can figure out using math and science. I think it’s important, especially these days, for people to learn how we decide whether something is true or not…. It seems like today there’s a whole lot of belief in things for which there is no evidence. As far as I’m concerned, the more we can educate people to the scientific method, the better off we’ll be as a society.”
To become a member, you just have to start showing up to the SBAU’s numerous monthly events. The membership fee is $20 per year, or free if you volunteer six times per year at events. Fortunately, all stargazing events are completely free to the public. Dr. Sean Kelly added on getting involved with the club, “…you don’t even have to be an expert. You just have to be interested. And you don’t even have to have a telescope; we have extra telescopes. If you don’t know how to use a telescope, you can learn. Come to one of the star parties, we’ll teach you. If you have a telescope that you don’t know how to use very well, bring it to the star party. We love sharing that with people.…. We’ll teach you how to set it up, how to do the alignment, and how to use it.”
The sky can often feel far away. Light years away. But the connection between the body and stars is a lot closer than one might think. Dr. Kelly explained, “We’re made of atoms, and the atoms on our body literally were once inside of stars. The stars had to blow up to spread those atoms out into the universe. At one point, those atoms then began the formation of our sun and our solar system, and we came to be from that.” Everyone deserves a chance to learn about the celestial sphere that encompasses our earthly home. That knowledge aids in bridging the gap between human consciousness and the universe around us, and in doing so brings a greater appreciation for the world around us. There’s no better place to start that journey than through the SBAU right here in Santa Barbara. Students of all ages are needed to keep the love of Astronomy alive. “They’re really nice people and friendly, and they would just love to share that with young people. We wanna see our club continue….we need to have new blood and new people that want to learn with us, and then we can share it.” Dr. Kelly remarked. If students are interested, further information is available at sbau.org. The stars are waiting.
