Two Weeks in Killarney

Outreach is a key component of what we do at the PVL. So when PhD student Conor got the chance to serve as the Astronomer in Residence in Killarney Provincial Park they jumped at the opportunity.
Above: The Sun setting over the Killarney Provincial Park observatory.

by Conor Hayes

Earlier this summer, I spent two weeks at Killarney Provincial Park, located four hours north of Toronto, as part of the Astronomer in Residence (AIR) program run by the York Observatory. The AIR program is very new, having started just last year. I had considered applying last year, but ultimately decided against it given that I was very busy writing up my Master’s thesis at the time.  With that not being a concern this summer, I submitted an application to the program that was successfully approved. I had originally planned to head up to Killarney at the beginning of the summer, but that plan was foiled by me catching COVID for the second time three days before I had planned to leave. Although I felt normal by the time I was supposed to start, we decided to delay my term as AIR out of an abundance of caution.

My actual responsibilities as the AIR were not very heavy. Over the two week period, I was expected to help the park staff run six events: two public talks, two solar observing sessions, and two nighttime observing sessions. This schedule meant that I had a lot of free time to explore the park and the town of Killarney itself, which is about a 15 minute drive from the park. I got a lot of hiking in, which is something that I haven’t been able to do much of since moving to Toronto in 2020. The trails in the park were a bit more challenging than those I was used to, as they involved a lot of climbing up and down steep rock formations. The challenge was always worth it though, as I’d get stunning views of the surrounding area, including Georgian Bay and the La Cloche Mountains.

[Figure 1: Looking out over Georgian Bay from the Chikanishing Trail.]

Heading into the program, I was expecting that the public talks would be the most straightforward part of my time there, since I’ve given several in the three years that I’ve been here at York. The observing sessions were a little more intimidating because I haven’t done much visual astronomy recently and I wasn’t certain how well I’d be able to talk about the sky itself and point people around at interesting objects that they can see just by looking up. Instead, it very much ended up being the opposite.

Part of the reason for the difference between my expectations and reality may have been the fact that this was the first time (other than my Master’s defence) that I was giving talks in-person, rather than online. The mood of the audience can really make or break your confidence, and I was really challenged during my first talk (on our Curiosity cloud observation campaign) by the fact that it began at 8 PM, well after the Sun had set. This meant that I couldn’t actually see the audience at all, so it felt like I was just speaking into a void. The second talk, about the history of the search for lunar water, was almost derailed by a thunderous downpour that broke open the skies about five minutes after I started, but we gathered everyone under the roof of the amphitheatre stage, which turned it into a more intimate classroom-style presentation rather than a public talk given to a large space full of people.

The observing sessions were very different than the public talks. Obviously I did point out things on the sky like various constellations as well as Jupiter and Saturn, but they were more of an opportunity for people to ask me questions about whatever astronomy-related topics they were interested in. I had been expecting this,  but I will admit that I was a little worried that three years of focusing on a very small and specific set of subjects for my Master’s and the first year of my PhD had degraded my general astronomy knowledge. However, this didn’t seem to be the case, and the several hours I spent both weeks talking to visitors about any astronomy-related topics that they had on their minds were honestly probably the best parts of my AIR tenure.

While I did enjoy all of my interactions with the visitors and park staff, the real reason why the AIR program is hosted in Killarney is that it is a certified dark sky site, far away from any major population centres (something that you become acutely aware of when you realize that the nearest large grocery store is an hour away in Sudbury). Although I had been to some fairly dark sites (e.g. the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia), I had never seen the night sky look like it did in Killarney. The familiar constellations, which are about all you can really see in Toronto, were drowned out by the sheer number of other stars. On several occasions, I just had to lie down on the ground and stare up at the Milky Way stretching itself across the sky. One thing that really surprised me was the number of satellites I could see during the night. In Toronto, it’s easy to see the ISS, but you’ll never really see any more than that. In Killarney, I would see one steadily marching across the sky about once every ten minutes for an hour or so after sunset.

[Figure 2: Close-ups of the Moon as seen through the Killarney 16-inch telescope, named Kchi Waasa Debaabing, Anishinaabemowin for “Seeing very far (as the eye can see).”

At night, when I wasn’t either staring up at the sky in awe or holding public observing sessions, I was engaging in astrophotography using the on-site 16-inch telescope. The weather during my time as AIR was phenomenal with only two nights clouded out, so I was out at the observatory every night, often until 2 or 3 AM. I came in with exactly zero astrophotography experience other than occasionally taking a photo with my phone’s camera through a telescope’s eyepiece. With 6+ hours of practice almost every night for two weeks (plus more than a few phone calls with Bruce Waters, the father of the AIR program), I improved quite dramatically, as can be seen below.

[Figure 3: Top row – views of Saturn and Jupiter at the start of my time in Killarney. Bottom row – Saturn and Jupiter again, now with two weeks of astrophotography practice.]

Having been back in Toronto for about a month now, there are some conveniences that I definitely missed up in Killarney, like cheap(er) groceries that I can walk to and cell service that’s better than a single bar of 3G connectivities. However, the sky here now looks depressingly bright and empty at night. If the AIR program continues into its third year, I will almost certainly be headed back to Killarney in the summer of 2024.

If you want to see more of the photos I took in Killarney, check out the AIR blog at https://www.yorku.ca/science/observatory/air/astronomer-in-residence-blog/