Harry Potter inspires astronomy show

RANDOLPH Astronomer Chris Fenwick will don a wizard’s hat at the Longo Planetarium at County College of Morris on Saturday  as he helps Harry Potter fans explore the heavens above Hogwarts.

“Astronomagic for Muggles (The Skies of Harry Potter),” a reprise of a show offered in June, explores the many astronomical references in the seven Harry Potter books published between 1997 and 2007.

Every summer, Harry and his friends took the O.W.L.s (Ordinary Wizard Levels) exam, which included taking a written section and plotting the positions of celestial bodies, including the planet Venus, on a star map. Beyond that, many of the names author J.K. Rowling bestowed on her characters were inspired by the heavens.

“Even when her references are not perfectly correct, they’re close enough for literature,” Fenwick said. “She’s not trying to teach a class. But what she’s written does get people interested in space.”

His show indulges that interest. “Astronomagic for Muggles” opens as the 45-year-old Fenwick introduces himself as a 146-year-old wizard who’d already retired from Hogwarts by the time Harry Potter arrived. The wizard says that, though he’s a bit feeble these days, he has heard all the Potter stories.

“We want to see outside,” he tells the audience, “so we have to open the door to the observatory, and I know there’s a spell for opening doors.” He scratches his head. “Now, what was that?”

When the audience yells out, “Alohomora,” and waves their wands, Fenwick uses the Digistar4 planetarium projection system to open the overhead dome and reveal the skies over the Hogwarts Observatory. They are accurate skies, too: the stars appear as they do over England.

Then Fenwick, who’s felt at home in a planetarium since his high school days at Newburgh Free Academy, sweeps his audience into a saga of the stars.

“I’ve taken the terminology and names that J.K. Rowling has used and bring in where those names came from,” Fenwick said.

Studying Sirius

Consider Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather. The audience is taken aback to learn the character is named after Sirius, a double star. That’s when Fenwick, ever the educator, leaps into his material.

“Sirius is the brightest star in earth’s night skies. Only the sun is brighter,” he explains. “Because it is such a bright star, the ancient Egyptians thought of it as the birthplace for all the night stars. There’s this big historical mystery: the ancient Egyptians said that Sirius kept the first tiny star it made as his companion.

“But it wasn’t until the 1700s into the 1800s that we had telescopes that could zoom in enough to show us Sirius actually does have a companion star,” he adds. “We have no idea how the ancient Egyptians knew.”

Then there’s Draco Malfoy, Harry’s rival, named after the constellation next to the Big Dipper.

“Draco is a slithery character,” Fenwick says, “and Draco, the constellation, is in the form of a snake dragon.” The dome produces lines of light that draw the shape in the night sky. “So it’s an appropriate name for a guy who has slippery, sneaky tendencies.”

On the show goes, covering Hermione Jean Granger, Harry’s friend named after the Asteroid Hermione, and Luna Lovegood, a witch, whose name evokes the moon, and much more.

Start of a series

According to Fenwick, who’s taught in many environments from middle school to college to corporate America, what’s really magical, educationally speaking, is dovetailing material from two different fields of study.

“One of the things that definitely grabs people’s attention is when you have different disciplines that cross over,” he said.

Given the popularity of “Astronomagic for Muggles,” the professor is planning a series of shows that link young adult novels and astronomy lessons. Now in the works is a presentation based on Rick Riordan’s Perseus “Percy” Jackson novels, in which all the gods of Olympus are still living, still falling in love with mortals and still having children. The plots follow the adventures of young Percy, a demigod, and his friends.

“The planets are named after gods — Jupiter, Saturn, Mars,” Fenwick said, “so I’ll bring them into that show.”

The tie between literature and the heavens is natural and very old, according to Fenwick. It can be traced to the stories of native peoples from the Inuit to the Incans, right into the modern era with the books of Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, and Rick Riordan, who wrote the Percy Jackson series.

It all started, though, with the ancient Greeks and Romans, who used the night sky as the first illustrated storybook. One example is the story of Cassiopeia and Cepheus, a legendary couple of Greek mythology who appears in the Percy Jackson books.

Astronomically, Cassiopeia and Cepheus, and their daughter Andromeda, are adjacent constellations in the northern sky, Fenwick said. But in the myths Cassiopeia is a vain queen fond of telling everyone she is the most beautiful thing to ever exist. She even says she and her daughter are even more beautiful than the Nereids, the nymph-daughters of the sea god Nereus.

“So the gods and goddesses got angry and demanded that she recant her statement,” Fenwick explained. “When she refused, they sent out a sea monster, The Kraken, whose shape can be seen a little bit lower in the sky. The monster ravaged the town where Cassiopeia and Cepheus lived. The couple begged the gods to call off The Kraken.”

But before the monster was quieted, the couple had to sacrifice Andromeda, who was tied to the rocks above the town, at the edge of the sea — until Perseus returned from one of his exploits and defeated the sea monster.

The point is, Fenwick said, the whole story is told through a collection of celestial bodies.

“This is before we had Netflix,” he said. “People went outside and made up their own Netflix in the stars. Today, people say, ‘Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Andromeda, Perseus — how do you remember all these names?’ But this story was the Harry Potter of that day. Everyone knew the story. They knew the names.”

School field trips

Ninety percent of the planetarium’s audiences are school groups that come on field trips from as far north as Greenwood Lake, New York, and as far west as East Stroudsburg, Pennysylvania. Fenwick offers them specialized presentations that complement their classes.

Last year, for instance, he obliged Mountain Lakes High School Latin teacher Mary Kane-Malone with a custom show to illustrate the constellations that pertained to ancient nautical navigation and ancient farming schedules.

“Our Latin program is a rigorous blend of the Latin language, the history, and the culture of ancient Rome,” Kane-Malone said. “In studying an empire that was at its pinnacle two millennia in the past, it can oftentimes be quite challenging to find ways to bring that curriculum to life. Our trip to hear Chris Fenwick’s planetarium lecture was an opportunity to do just that.

“There was one particularly wonderful moment,” she added, “when the students realized that the stories and legends they had learned about were recognizable in the night sky outside their own homes.”

Unlike these specialized programs, “Astronomagic for Muggles” is open to Harry Potter fans of all ages in the general public, including youths who grew up on the stories and their parents.

“The last show I did, there was a group of six people in their late 20s who were sitting right in front of me,” Fenwick said. “They were waving the wands and doing everything the kids were doing.”

Participants are invited to bring their own hats and wands to the planetarium, which does not provide them.

Staff Writer Lorraine Ash: 973-428-6660; lash@dailyrecord.com

Learn more:

Astronomagic for Muggles (The Skies of Harry Potter)

WHAT: A show presenting the astronomy in the Harry Potter universe

WHEN: 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24

WHERE: Longo Planetarium in Cohen Hall at County College of Morris, 214 Center Grove Road, Randolph

COST: $10 per person, regardless of age

INFO AND RESERVATIONS: 973-328-5076 or http://tinyurl.com/qykqy5q

For general information about bringing a school group or scout group to the Longo Planetarium to see one of its program, visit www.ccm.edu/planetarium