Catherine Heymans, astronomer for Scotland: Traveling millions of years, across the universe, directly in my garden

It’s close to freezing on one of those fabulously clear Scottish nights. I am in pitch darkness in a back garden of the Midlothian staring at a cluster of stars that are over 13 billion years old, which are almost as old as the universe itself.

My vision for this awe-inspiring spectacle is entirely due to a new friendship I forged with the President of the Edinburgh Astronomical Society. We turn the telescope towards the vortex galaxy, created from a galactic collision half a billion years ago. I imagine the 31 million year journey that the light of the galaxy took to traverse the universe, only to be captured in our backyard.

As an astrophysics teacher, I have used some of the world’s largest telescopes on top of mountains in Chile and Hawaii.

I have mapped over 100 million galaxies in our universe, going back in time over 10 billion light years to try to understand where our universe came from and what fate is planning its future. When I learned that I was going to be named the new Astronomer Royal of Scotland, I naturally compared myself to my ancestors.

The mountain top observatories that make my research possible today were designed by Scotland’s second astronomer royal, Charles Piazzi Smyth. My hot nights in the control room of the crashed computer telescope could never have been imagined by Charles and his wife Jessica, who spent endless nights together in the cold, drawing the astronomical objects they saw.

Charles and Jessica’s experiences, however, are much more similar to those of the majority of Scottish astronomers, a rapidly growing group of enthusiasts who explore the universe from their backyards.

Scotland has some of the largest expanses of dark skies in Europe, home to two internationally renowned Dark Sky Parks in the Cairngorms and Galloway. It is true that the Scottish weather is not always there but when the sky clears up in these parks, far from the lights of the cities, we can see a dense band of stars stretching right through of the sky, marking the edges of the arm spiral that swirls around our own Milky Way galaxy.

Sadly, the majority of the Scottish population misses this awe-inspiring natural wonder, its skyline obscured by the city street lights that pollute our skies.

“Staying local” during the pandemic led to the daily household question of whether we should go left or right for our walk. After 14 months of “left or right” I know every inch of every street, sometimes feeling trapped in a world that had shrunk dramatically. And yet, on that frigid Midlothian night, looking at the Leo triplet, a trio of galaxies 35 million light years apart, I no longer felt trapped.

The silence of the garden was punctuated by notifications from the astronomy group WhatsApp: fellow astronomers enjoying the Scottish night sky, sharing their various discoveries and welcoming me to their large community.

As the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, I want to share our wonderful world with Scots from all walks of life, whether in your gardens, our Dark Sky parks, our outdoor education centers or via the internet.

Our country may seem small, but the universe is huge and awe-inspiring and with Scotland’s unique natural resource the dark skies my dream is for astronomy to become one of our country’s favorite pastimes.