Setting The Stars To Music

While the tantalizing vocals of Broadway singer Linda Eder recently caressed the eardrums of the crowds at Burns Park in Massapequa, some listeners discovered that her songs were also providing a musical backdrop to the exploration of the universe itself.

Music And Astronomy Under The Stars is a star-gazing program started by Dr. Donald Lubowich, Coordinator of the Astronomy Outreach Program at Hofstra University, and it's designed to give concertgoers a glimpse of the heavens throughout Long Island and New York City.

Sponsored by a NASA grant of $300,000, the program included telescope observations of the sun prior to the concerts and of the moon, stars, and nebulae during and after the events, combined with a multimedia astronomy presentation. Their partner in this endeavor is The Amateur Observers' Society of New York.

Dr. Lubowich explained that he got the idea for his program when he first noticed ads for the Town of Oyster Bay's Music Under the Stars.

"I thought, why not Stars Under the Stars? After all, the people are already out here at night, listening to the music," he said. "So, three years ago I did a feasibility test in Theodore Roosevelt park, and we got over 200 people to wait in line for 45 minutes to look at Saturn and Jupiter. So, I thought there might be something to it."

Children especially were taken aback by the sights before their eyes.

"It's beautiful," said 11 year-old Sarah Brennen of Massapequa Park. "I've always looked up in the sky and never thought about what was really there before."

"Right now we're looking at Venus," Dr. Lubowich said, pointing out which heavenly bodies were slated to be on display. "In about 20 minutes we're going to be looking at Saturn, Mars, and Neptune in addition to some star clusters."

Among the high-tech gear onlookers used to peer into the cosmos were a Refractor, a bigger version of the telescope that Galileo used; a Newtonian telescope, originally designed by Sir Isaac Newton, upgraded with motors that follow the rotation of the Earth to keep you locked on target; and several other types of telescopes, including ones that utilized complex arrays of mirrors to produce their images.

"I've never seen all the stars and stuff so up-close before," said Nick Pantaforte of Wantagh. "I'm totally asking mom and dad for a telescope for my birthday."

Dr. Lubowich pointed out that his program expanded the horizons of many concert-goers.

"We get a lot of people who might not normally go to a star party or a science museum, but they come to the concerts," he said. "So we're reaching all sorts of people of all ethnic groups...whoever's interested in the sky, we're willing to take the time to show them the wonders of the heavens."