What is Starfest?

It’s only Canada’s largest astronomical party! I came back from this amazing event about a few days ago. From my first experience, I hope to tell you how much you will enjoy, and what to expect if you go next year.

I heard about this event from RASC Mississauga (I’ve been a member for about a year). Starfest takes place every year in Ayton, ON, Canada, which is about a 2-3 hour drive from Toronto. Hundreds of people from around North America gather together on a huge field to share their knowledge, equipment, and tents for astronomy.

Tents and telescopes set up on the huge field

D A Y   1:

As soon as you get there, the staff asks you to tape red cellophane around all the lights in the car. This is so the bright white lights of the car don’t affect other’s visions or damage their telescope. If you forget to do this, you get to hear mean things during the night.

This event goes on for a week (Monday to Sunday), but all the presentations and events are on Friday and Saturday. If you get there in the first few days, you get to set up your area closer to the event rooms. If you choose not to camp in tents, you may also park your car in an area near the entrance, which is the furthest away from the events.

My family and I arrived Friday morning just in time for the first presentation, “Astronomy 101: Starting out right in Astronomy” by Marc Fitkin. There are all kinds of presentations here for astronomers of every level. There were talks about how to develop astronomy products, which filters to use for telescopes, submillimeter telescopes, physics, etc. So I fully understood some lectures while others went right over my head. I grabbed some poutine from a truck right outside, then listened to a couple of other lectures as well.

One presentation I found particularly interesting was “Astrophotography in the City” by Ben Law. He explained how he took pictures of planets and deep-sky objects from his light-polluted backyard. I think this topic has become more relevant these days. There were many jokes in his presentation which made it very entertaining to me, one of which was…

Image from Cloudy Nights

There are many vendors at Starfest selling telescopes, filters, cameras, tripods, mounts, and everything else astronomy-related. Svbony, Sky-Watcher, Celestron, and Astronomy Plus were there and selling their latest and exclusive-to-Starfest equipment. I was talking to a Sky-Watcher employee, and the topic of star trails came up. Before Starfest, I planned out what equipment I would need and how to take my first star trail here. While talking, he told me how he quickly shined a light on a cactus during one of his shots (he lives in Arizona), so when he processed the images, the ground was a silhouette with a bright cactus. This was a very creative idea, and I think I’ll use it in a future attempt.

Now, there was a dinner break. Some people ate from the food truck, some people went left Starfest to get different food. My family and I decided to drop some things off at the motel we would be staying at. There are many places to stay around Starfest for people who don’t like camping in tents. There is a list of local accommodations on Starfest’s website.

After we dropped off our luggage, we looked for a place to eat. Some people in my RASC Missauga group went to eat at Pebbles, but we were at the motel when they left to eat. So we found a Subway instead. After this quick meal, we drove back to Starfest to watch the last lecture of the day, “The Great North American Eclipse of 2024” by Fred Espenak. I learned there would total solar eclipse in April 2024, and I could see it from where I live. I learned what eclipses look like and what the diamond ring is. This presentation gave me all the information I needed to get ready for this rare opportunity!

Image from Berkeley News

The last program that night was a night sky tour. The night was so dark, we could all see the Milky Way! An astronomer took us through all the constellations in the night sky and told us tricks for remembering where they are located. This was very entertaining for me. It was fun trying to make out Scorpia, Hercules, Cygnus, Sagittarius, from just dots in the sky. The only problem was everyone’s neck hurting after looking up for so long.

Clear night sky and the faint Milky Way

We used red flashlights to find our way back to our car. As I mentioned, we couldn’t use white flashlights because they were way too bright. This is what we looked like…

Holding red lights

We were planning to take star trails that night, so we took out our camera, tripod, and intervalometer. An intervalometer is a machine that plugs into your camera and takes multiple shots at a certain interval, hence the name. I don’t know why we didn’t get set up during the day, because it was outstandingly difficult setting up with one hand while pointing a red flashlight in the cold dark. OH! I forgot to mention, it was so cold at night, we needed winter jackets during the summer. Canada, right? Anyway, after we got everything set up, we started taking some pictures with our DSLR camera. The stars were showing up fine but when set the intervalometer to take a series of shots, every other shot came out blurry. There was lots of dew that night, but I don’t think that was the reason. We kept trying the entire night until it got very late. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong, so we gave up and decided to head back to our motel. I wasn’t expecting this, so I was upset. The only thing I could do was try again tomorrow.

The field during the night

D A Y  2:

Downtown Walkerton was close to our motel. There were many fancy shops. We went to a clothing store, a thrift shop, and lastly, a restaurant. We had brunch at Sunnyside Grill, and while we were there, we were doing research to find out what was going wrong with our camera. We had no luck and headed back to Starfest.

Today was busier: more people, more telescopes, more vendors. After another lecture, we went to the vendor from yesterday at Sky-Watcher who told us about his star trails. We explained our problem with our camera and he was very helpful to take a look at our camera. Finally, we figured out that we had the wrong file type. The camera was set to take RAW+JPEG files instead of RAW files. I was relieved and filled with hope again. We would try taking star trails again that night.

It was now time for group pictures. I found the RASC Mississauga people, and after chatting for a bit, we took this…

RASC Mississauga group picture, taken from John Marchese's phone

I’m the youngest person in this picture (bottom left corner). There was also a picture of everyone who attended Starfest. I have no idea where I am in there…

Starfest group picture from their Instagram @nyaastarfest

There weren’t any events immediately after that, so my family and I had some free time. Last night we were struggling to get set up in the dark, so we went to our car and unpacked everything now. It was much easier, and this would even save us time for more star gazing during the night. As I was setting up, I realized my tripod and telescope were still soaking wet from yesterday’s dew.

Setting up our telescope and tripod.

This was a huge task out of the way now. We just grabbed some dinner and came back for the last lecture, “A Map of Cosmic Time”, by Dr. Katie Mack. After that was the imaging contest results, where people submitted the pictures they had taken that year and the winners were announced. There were so many pictures in the four categories: landscape, deep sky objects, planetary/solar system objects, and timelapse. They were all very beautiful pictures, but winners were decided and multiple trophies were given out.

Dr. Katie Mack’s presentation

Now was the very last event of Starfest 2023, the giveaway! There were so many free prizes from the sponsors of the event! Names of all the attendees in Starfest were in a container, and they were being pulled out one by one until all the prizes were gone. The people handing out the prizes were acting comical, making the entire time very enjoyable. I was sitting patiently, hoping my name would be called. People were getting free eyepieces, free filters, free telescopes! Unfortunately, my name was never called, but the event was still very entertaining.

With our red flashlights, we found our way back to our set-up. All we had to do was press a button, and the camera started taking pictures. This time it worked! All the pictures came out clear. I just needed to go home and process them to get my star trail.

My telescope was already set up as well. One of my friends from the RASC Mississauga group let me borrow their 8” Dobsonian. I was planning to observe Saturn and Jupiter that night, so I was trying to find them with my telescope. I tried for a while, but I couldn’t find it. I asked someone nearby. After looking back and forth between the telescope and the eyepiece a few times, the guy told us our telescope wasn’t aligned and it needed to be culminated. Shoot.

He told us not to give up though. The entire field was filled with other telescopes, and he suggested I walk around to visit them. I’m glad I did this. Not only did I see Saturn’s rings and Jupiter's four moons, but I even saw star clusters and nebulas. The telescopes themselves were a thing to see. One of the homemade telescopes was completely hollow. The biggest telescope on the field had a diameter of 32 inches!! The pictures in there were enormous and crystal clear. Lots of people were gathered around it for a chance to look through the eyepiece.

32″ Dobsonian and the ladder to get to the eyepiece

Finally, we came back to our area and cleaned everything up. We checked, double-checked, and triple-checked with our red lights to make sure we didn’t leave any small pieces behind. After driving for a few hours, we came back home at around 3:00 a.m. that night.

The next morning, I stacked the images from my DSLR, and got this horrible mess…

Star Trails?

There were two problems, I didn’t focus my camera correctly and some clouds rolled by. So the trails are blurry and broken up. This is fine though for my first star trail. I can’t wait to try again!

Overall, Starfest 2023 was an exciting and unique experience for me. As someone new to this hobby of astronomy I found Starfest beginner-friendly for us, but there were things for advanced astronomers as well. The lectures and the hands-on experience with my equipment taught me many new things that I can apply later on. I hope to go again next year and I hope to meet you there as well.

Thank you for reading.

Me and the vendors in the background