A student space odyssey

Don’t be surprised if you come across student Serag Badr gazing through a large telescope in a Wageningen park. Serag recently founded the astronomy association WASA, and he dreams of one day having his own company ‘in space’. Student editor Laura Bergshoef accompanied him one evening, stargazing with him and quizzing him about his passion.

Text: Laura Bergshoef

A cold night wind whistles through the park next to one of the star-shaped blocks of flats close to the campus. Walking across a big patch of grass in the dark is student Serag Badr, carrying a large telescope. Yellow light shines through the windows of a few student rooms in the distance. ‘Look, the clouds are slowly drifting off over there,’ calls Serag, pointing skywards. He puts the telescope down, unfolds the tripod and focusses the lens on the moon. ‘If we are lucky, we’ll clearly see meteorites, planets, Orion and the Andromeda galaxy.’

Perseids

Serag is a third-year Bachelor’s student of Land and Water Management and the founder of Wageningen Astronomy Student Association (WASA), also known as Aldebaran. The association was started six months ago and is not officially recognized yet. But there are already two full WhatsApp groups with more than 200 members, and a further 100 are taking part through other channels. They sometimes arrange to meet in the evening, Covid measures permitting, to go stargazing together. Serag: ‘Last summer we watched the Perseids from this very park. They are a meteor shower that that leaves light-emitting stripes in the sky. They are also called falling stars. That was the first WASA meeting. I distributed flyers the week before and a lot more people came along than expected: about 60. Members can also attend lectures and events related to astronomy on campus.’

For Serag, WASA is a step towards a company of his own, which he has been dreaming about for years. He took his management exam this morning in the Leeuwenborch. ‘WASA is a venture in which I can afford to make mistakes, and with which I can learn all the ins and outs of building a network. I think that is probably the hardest part of setting up a successful initiative: putting together a motivated team. Starting a student association is a good exercise.’

Cool

‘Wageningen already has diving associations, but no astronomy association yet,’ adds Serag. ‘So I thought, I’ll start one myself, then. It works the same way when you start your own company: you find out what there is demand for, and what doesn’t exist yet. And anyway, astronomy is just really cool. You can see from the number of members that I’m not the only WUR student who thinks so. With the association I am also showing that astronomy doesn’t have to be an extremely expensive hobby. You can get two telescopes like mine for the price of a new PlayStation.’ Serag concentrates on turning a wheel on the telescope. Then he gets excited: ‘Come and look, through the viewer. Can you see it? Wait a moment. The clouds are in the way. The moisture in the clouds deflects the light, making the image hazy again.’ Serag turns the wheel again. ‘Look again,’ he says, and your reporter stares through the viewer. The moon! ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ The telescope zooms in on part of the moon where the craters are clearly visible.

Other civilizations might see dinosaurs here

Serag: ‘The light from distant heavenly bodies takes time to travel to the earth. When you look at the moon, you are going a little more than one second back in time. Civilizations that train their telescopes on the Earth from a distant planet might see dinosaurs.’ Serag opens an app on his telephone that shows lots of red dots. ‘The clouds should by rights have gone by now but the wind is not strong enough, so they are hanging around longer.’

In his small student room on the 14^th floor, Serag shows me another telescope. Apart from that, there’s just a bed, a desk and several bookcases filled with hundreds of biographies. And the WASA flyer on one of the doors. 

Fascination

When did his fascination with the stars begin? ‘Ooh, when I was a little kid.’ He picks up a photo from his desk. It shows a little boy standing in front of a white screen, surrounded by children’s books about dinosaurs and a toy rocket hanging in the air. ‘I’ve read a lot about astronomy and space travel ever since I was a child.

Astronomy is just really cool

Space travel is now developing rapidly and a lot of exciting things are happening. I can see a lot of potential there for my own company. Moving polluting industries from the Earth to the moon, for example. Take the nitrogen problem. Agriculture is a major source of nitrogen. Already now, scientists – here too – are experimenting with growing plants in moon soil. If that works well, we’ll have solved the nitrogen problem. How cool would it be to apply the knowledge from my degree in space, in the form of my own company?’

Official

Making the association official, so that it will continue after he has graduated, is Serag’s goal for this year. An official association gets a subsidy and storage space, he says, which is handy for cameras and telescopes. ‘But you don’t get to become an official association just like that. The association must first have existed for three years, and you must register with the Chamber of Commerce. In the next few months, I’m going to do that and launch a professional website.’

A message from Serag:
Are you interested in space, or would you like to help launch the first student astronomy association in Europe? Then you are welcome! You can find us on social media and there is currently no membership fee.

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