It is early October 2011. As dusk falls over Karachi, half a dozen state-of-the-art astronomical telescopes are neatly lined up at a stall at a family fair at the NED University’s main campus. It is indeed a pleasant surprise to see thousands of visitors come to this science-themed event, including foreigners.

Braving Karachi’s traffic they came on a Saturday evening from all parts of the metropolis. They had come to watch celestial curiosities live at the stall of the Karachi Astronomers’ Society (KaAS), which had partnered with Suparco, the national space agency, to celebrate World Space Week.

Interest in astronomy and the space sciences seems to run high among Pakistanis, and thanks to efforts made by Suparco and the dedicated buffs of KaAS, the astronomy scene in our metropolis is livelier than ever. Since the club’s foundation in 2008, the members of KaAS have been routinely doing astronomy outreach in educational institutions and public places. They closely watch each month’s new moon and photograph it whenever the weather allows, contribute data to international bodies and collaborate with astronomy enthusiasts across the country by maintaining an active online presence.

They have built some of their telescopes themselves, and rejoice in sharing live views of not just the night sky with their compatriots but also of the Sun’s surface through specialised instruments. In fact one of the founding members of KaAS has the biggest and most powerful privately-owned telescope in the entire South Asian region.

Some KaAS members — not content with astronomy activities confined to their home city — have travelled to other cities in the country to help organise events there. For the first time in Pakistan, thoughtfully planned practical astronomy workshops spanning several weeks are set to start in the metropolis before the year ends.

Also, once every month or so, Karachi’s amateur astronomers go way beyond organising entertaining and educational events for Karachiites and do something a little more adventurous: they take sky-watching and sightseeing trips to Balochistan and remote locations in Sindh. They call these adventurous journeys, which anyone can be part of, rut jagas, which of course means staying up at night.

In 2010 alone KaAS organised eight such ‘dark sky’ trips to exotic yet accessible places in Balochistan and Sindh. Away from wasted outdoor lighting in the city, the night sky displays a splendour that is hard to put in words. As if this were not enough, some of these retreats boast extra spice; in the recent past, Karachi’s astronomy buffs have watched showers of hundreds of ‘falling stars’ from dark skies.

While they excitedly await the next such display of celestial fireworks (scheduled for December 13-14 this year), they plan to hunt for ‘fallen stars’ in the Thar desert. And so the learning, sharing and sky-watching experience continues.—Zain Ahmed