Borrow a Telescope: One Teen's Mission to Share the Stars

The Telescope Lending Library launched on a clear night in November 2021, with an outdoor viewing event attended by an enthusiastic mixture of public, library staff and members of the Amateur Astronomy Association (AAA) of New York. Absent from this experience, however, was the eleventh-grade astronomy lover whose plan to lend telescopes as freely as books—evolved over months of proposals and Zoom conferences—was finally coming to fruition. 

Yui H.’s passion for astronomy began with a different plan, formed at age nine while living in Singapore, after several screenings of Interstellar. “I was going to send [my dad] into orbit in a spaceship approaching the speed of light,” to keep him "the same age forever." Her budding interest in special relativity blossomed into a worshipful, if solitary, exploration of celestial objects through books and films. Yet developing an interest in astronomy while growing up in any major city presents challenges. Among those challenges, light pollution looms large. The purplish haze distorting the firmament above most cities is a major obstacle to fostering a curiosity for the night sky, such that even prominent constellations familiar to many who grew up outside of the city—whether with a backyard telescope or not—are lost. Indeed, a study on light pollution, cited in a recent article in Harper’s, concludes 99% of North Americans live under light-polluted skies and “the majority of children born in North America today will never see the Milky Way." Perhaps due to this vanishing accessibility, Yui found limited interest among her peers growing up and limited curricular support, even in her private school.

“In private school, a lot of the competition is between how you grew up, what was accessible to you. Astronomy is one of the rare things where I had to go out of my way to get it into my life.”

On another clear night several years later, Yui, now a resident of New York taking music lessons in Lincoln Center, happened upon a public observing session where she was offered an opportunity to view some star clusters through their telescopes. “I was blown away by how everything that I had studied…suddenly seemed to come to life!” Yui became an engaged member of AAA soon after, finding among the membership “a new sense of companionship, warmth, and inspiration among like-minded colleagues.” Yet, less than a year after this chance encounter, COVID-19 engulfed the world beneath the stars. Among the many vagaries associated with this outbreak: reduced opportunities to gather for further public observation; reduced access to her newly acquired community.

During this time, Yui threw herself into AAA’s marketing and outreach committees and, remembering how expensive and out of reach was the possibility of purchasing her first telescope—“like 10 million Christmas gifts in one”—thought, “maybe I can borrow one?” Working with her guides and mentors in the association—Harris, Bart, John and Naomi—she researched public library programs, found a model in an Ohio library system and drew up a proposal to bring a telescope lending to New York City library users. By the time Yui approached Brooklyn Public Library, AAA had both the idea and the funding for five Smartphone App-Enabled Refractor Telescopes. She trusted the public library to figure out how to lend them safely and equitably. 

In recent years, Brooklyn Public Library has developed a number of ‘libraries of things’ programs in response to public interest, including Musical Instruments and Board Games, yet figuring out how to share five telescopes during a pandemic among millions of potential users presents unique challenges. The refractor telescopes were selected for their power and ease of use—you can use your smartphone to align them, for example, but nevertheless a telescope loan program contains a lot of moving parts—both literal and figurative, which unfortunately took a while to get into circulation. The nine months it took to move from proposal to implementation—a significant interval in the life of a teenager—was time enough for Yui to enroll at a new school (with a "really great observatory") outside the city. This being so, and despite being responsible the collection’s existence, Yui has neither borrowed a telescope nor seen the fruits of her accomplishment in person. She has never witnessed a delighted library user, telescope kit in-hand, gaze directed with new expectancy to the night sky and beyond.

I cannot help but wonder if embarking on this project—to ensure that the embodied, shared experience she lacked be accessible through telescopes she may never look through, to observers she may never meet—feels familiar to someone used to observing objects through light emitted long ago, many miles away. Since she’s not around to see for herself, I called Yui to ask who she imagines is checking out the telescopes from the collection she left behind. Her response: “I always envision teenagers, because I’m a teenager myself. But if it’s older people, that’s okay.”

In the six months since the loan program launched, BPL’s five telescopes have consistently been on loan, with a waitlist sitting at around 80. (If each telescope is picked up and kept for its maximum loan period, the wait would be 427 days.) Fortunately, help with the waitlist may be coming—both AAA and BPL are working to purchase more telescopes to share throughout the library system. Within several months, the library hopes to more than double the available telescopes. If you want to borrow a telescope, simply place a hold, as you would with any other resource in BPL’s collection. When it's your turn—hopefully when clear, dark skies align—you’ll receive an email to pick up your telescope in the Society, Sciences and Technology division in the Central Library, whereupon you’ll be reminded not to use your telescope to look at the sun.

Before the end of our call, I asked Yui how she feels knowing her project is a success, she said “I’m pretty proud—I feel self-assured. The feeling of doing something—of having an idea and having it come to completion—is stronger and more comfortable. I recommend everyone do it!”

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Looking for a book to guide your exploration of the night sky, check out this booklist curated by staff in the Society, Sciences & Technology division, or check out some of the books that piqued Yui's interest in astronomy.