By Jett

As humans have steadily turned the night into day, astronomy has evolved significantly. No longer can observatories be located near major population centers, where light pollution has wiped out the quality of the night sky. True research and high-level astrophotography are now only accessible through isolated islands of darkness that will continue to shrink in the coming years. Within these sheltered pockets, astronomers have placed remote observatories which allow them to observe the night sky remotely under the best conditions possible. This year, I was lucky enough to run my own telescope from one of them.

A Haven in the Desert

I spent my gap year imaging from Utah Desert Remote Observatories (UDRO), a facility of two roll-off buildings in the Utah desert, run by a family of passionate astronomers. Remote observatories operate by protecting the telescopes during the day and opening to expose them to the sky at night. The instruments they house range from small amateur rigs like mine to professional telescopes owned by major space agencies. For example, the telescope behind mine is owned and operated by the Polish Space Agency (POLSA) and monitors space debris in the path of the International Space Station.

The use of the word “telescope” to describe these instruments is somewhat misleading. The telescope itself is only the tip of the iceberg. A mount does the critical work of tracking the sky to counteract Earth’s rotation; a camera captures the image; and a host of smaller components keep the whole system running through a night of long exposures.

The Hunt for Nebula

The dark skies at UDRO opened up research I could never do from my backyard in Washington State, including nebula hunting. The night sky is filled with faint pockets of glowing ionized gas and dust that astronomers call nebulae. Most were catalogued decades ago by famous astronomers like Messier, but the faintest and smallest remain undiscovered, and that work has largely fallen to amateurs. Professionals operate under tight constraints on time, cost, and efficiency that rarely allow them to spend hundreds of hours trained on a patch of sky that might hold nothing at all, a necessity for discovering faint nebulae.

Remote observatories are one of the only ways amateurs can contribute to this endeavor. These nebulae are so faint that even a little light pollution exponentially increases the exposure time needed to capture them. A truly dark sky isn’t a luxury for the discovery of nebulae, it is a requirement.

The Supernova Remnant Project

This year, my research within the hunt for undiscovered nebula took its biggest step. I shifted my focus from discovering nebulae to doing nebula research post-discovery. At a conference in Tasmania, I connected with two university professors who share an interest in the amateur hunt for undiscovered nebulae, specifically, supernova remnants. These objects emit not only in visible light but also in radio and X-ray, and characterizing one properly means gathering data across all three bands. Amateurs can only observe in the visible, which leaves a scientific blind spot: most amateur-discovered remnants have never been studied at other wavelengths, largely because the professional instruments required are out of reach.

To close that gap, we’ve spent the past few months applying for time on professional instruments. Recently, we were awarded time on the VLA (Very Large Array) in New Mexico, one of the most advanced radio interferometers in the world. This represents a chance to study these objects in a way they never have been studied before.

Images from This Year

Alongside the research, I spent much of the year capturing and processing images of deep-space objects. A few of my favorites are below.

 

Why Dark Skies Matter

All of this depends on something fragile: the dark sky itself. Dark-sky advocacy has gained traction in recent years, but light pollution is still misunderstood by the general public and is a largely overlooked form of environmental pollution. Roughly 80% of the world’s population now lives under light-polluted skies, and the Milky Way is hidden from a third of humanity; nearly 80% of us in North America. Those numbers are only rising.

The damage goes far beyond astronomy. Artificial light at night disrupts ecosystems, from the migratory patterns of animals to insect and bird populations, and the energy wasted on unneeded outdoor lighting adds needlessly to carbon emissions.

Understanding and supporting this cause was one of my primary goals for the year. I visited dark-sky locations across Utah and the western United States, along with several towns and cities that have committed themselves to preserving the quality of their night skies. If you’d like to read more about dark-sky conservation and the impact of light pollution, I’ve written about it here: https://utahdesertremote.com/dark-sky-week/.