Exploring our Cosmos from Earth: The First Steps of a Great Journey

By Hani M Bathish

It takes a native of a very small country with a very limiting and stifling medieval culture to truly appreciate the vastness of the Cosmos and value its ability to change perspectives and realign priorities… As the late Carl Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and populiser of science, said in his ground breaking documentary Cosmos, looking at the Earth from orbit it is hard to see national or religious boundaries and you begin to realize that the planet is one organism and an organism at war with itself is doomed. At the time Cosmos was aired in the 1980s, the world was at serious risk of being destroyed by a full nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, today, the threats to our world and our lives and those of our children hasn’t diminished but increased and multiplied.

So, when your Earthly troubles get too much to bear and your outlook gets decidedly bleak and dark, like mine did, pack up your telescope in your old kit bag and trudge up a hill or mountain away from the man made light pollution and bath in the magnificence of the stars. And that was exactly what I did on the night of August 24. A group of us, some 250 stargazers from every part of the country, young and old, families with kids, college friends, couples, even a few foreign tourists, all piled into three large buses and we headed up to the Warde ski slopes in Kfardhebian to set up telescopes and folding chairs and brave the cold to watch our own galaxy, the Milky Way, the planets Jupiter and Saturn, the stars and our closest neighboring galaxy NGC 224 or M31, otherwise known as the Andromeda Galaxy. Facebook, it turns out, has its uses, it is the best way to search stargazing groups in Lebanon. The trip I went on was organized by The Cosmic Dome, but there are others as well.

Sitting by the bonfire at Kfar Dhebian after a night of celestial observations

Humans are an excessively arrogant and stubborn species and even intelligent beings among us can fall into the trap of assuming we and our problems actually matter. It takes a trip to the stars, or as close as we can get to them unaided by rocket fuel, to gain a little perspective on how tiny and insignificant we actually are. We don’t seem to appreciate how blessed we are with a brain that comprehends and can absorb abstract knowledge as well as highly sensitive visual tools (our eyes) that allow us to recognize and marvel at the vastness of the universe. Yet, we do not feel alone at all, instead we are hopeful for the promise of a journey yet to begin. We are on the launch pad so to speak and hope is high.

My interest in astronomy and the cosmos was ignited by Sagan’s documentary and his poetic style of writing: a scientist with the erudition of a professor of English literature, it was unavoidable that I would be hooked on astronomy. 

My first comet was a big deal. Hale Bopp was a pretty easily accessible celestial object in April 1997 and remained visible from Earth for 18 months. You didn’t need a telescope to see it, just your most sensitive of instruments, your eyes. Since I didn’t have a driving license at the time, I kept pestering my father to take me out as far from the city lights as possible in order to photograph the comet, which one weekend he did. In Dubai, it’s hard to go anywhere without the extremely obtrusive sodium street lamps flooding everything with a sickly yellowish light. But, we finally found a spot. I set up the tripod and camera, focused the lens, set the shutter speed to take in as much light as possible and using a shutter release cord so as not to disturb the camera body and get a shaky image, I snapped the shot. It’s not the best of images, but it is one I am proud off to this day, like a parent proud of his five-year-old’s crayon sketches and puts them up on the fridge for all to see!

My photo of Hale Bopp, 1997

Since my retirement from the hurly burly of daily reporting and journalism, I have had the time to spend focusing on what’s important to me, and astronomy is an activity that is very close to my heart. 

I firmly believe that as a species we can still evolve to be better than we are. Through science education, by accepting the scientific method and applying the rigors of science to our life problems and insurmountable disagreements, we liberate ourselves from the gravity of culture and tradition and mysticism and superstition that keep us rooted in place, and by doing so we suddenly find the Cosmos becoming a brighter more hopeful place.

Shall we instead, as Carl Sagan said, “listen to our reptilian brain, counseling fear, territoriality and aggression?” Or shall we broaden our minds and embrace science? Sagan wondered as we do today if humanity will survive what he termed “our technological adolescence”, or shall mankind destroy itself before long. Today, policies from the Trump White House and the dozens of populist right wing regimes around the globe, seems blind to the evidence of science, deaf to the pleading of the multitudes to put on the brakes on this runaway train to self-annihilation. But, hope in positive change springs eternal, this is a hallmark of our species.

Photo by Moe Abbas, The Cosmic Dome

Sagan counsels the spreading of knowledge as an antidote to public ignorance. He noted that when the library of Alexandria was burned to the ground, no one lifted a finger to protect it, because although it was science’s cradle of great ideas, the library was an elitist institution, that never questioned prevailing socio-cultural orthodoxies. It never applied the practical aspects of scientific knowledge to the real world to, for example, labor saving machines or to alleviate the frustrations and anxieties of the masses who remained mired in mysticism and superstition. Instead, science was at the time reserved for the entertainment of kings. Thus, humanity lost a great treasure trove of learning.

The great 16^thcentury astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler once wrote: ‘We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomenon of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heaven are so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking for fresh nourishment.” When I heard that for the first time on an episode of Cosmos, it gave me goose bumps. If this isn’t good news for the easily bored by terrestrial matters and an open invitation for exploring the deep blackness that envelopes our blue world, I don’t know what is!

An image of the Milky Way by Astrophotographer Bassel Zinati

We are fast approaching the commemoration of World Space Week in Lebanon in the first week of October. This year (2019) also marks the 100^thanniversary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and Lebanon, as other countries, gets to name one exo-star and one exo-planet and we as Lebanese are all invited to submit suggestions for names for these two exo-worlds, which simply means worlds outside our solar system. To submit your suggestions go to 'Lebanese Nameexoworlds' Facebook page. Right now, these exoworlds are identified as HD 192263 and HD 192263b. So, don’t think that Lebanon is some dark forgotten corner of the world where the light of the cosmos doesn’t shine, we are all children of this universe and we all deserve to be an active part in its exploration.

“It is the birth right of every child to encounter the Cosmos anew, in every culture and every age…” Sagan said in his documentary, adding that science is not perfect, that it is just a tool, ever-changing, but applicable to everything. It is the best we have and with it we can vanquish the impossible. Humanity, is just now wading into the ankle-deep waters of the Cosmos, as Sagan said, and still the journey before us, as in his day, is great and exciting... the question remains: how long shall we linger in the shallows?

See you among the stars!