By Lerraine Neo (26A01A)

There are millions of stars in the sky, yet we rarely ever see even a hundred of them. Few of us dream of strapping down into a spacecraft and exploring the galaxy, and even fewer actually make it there. For the rest, trapped here—on earth, in the city, under the clouds—the most we will ever see of the endless cosmos are fading stars, waning moons, and the dying sun. 

Perhaps that is why we are obsessed with stars. The shiny gold sticker we get for a well-written essay, the lights we string up during festivals, the actors and singers and performers of Hollywood and beyond. We turn to them and we see hope, guidance, the future. 

Obsession cannot power a spaceship. There are some dreams we will never achieve: to run our hands along the night sky, to let the stars singe our fingertips. But at Astronite 2025, you could almost imagine yourself coming close. 

Chaos: A Universal Constant

One of Astronomy Club’s two flagship annual events, Astronite 2025 fell on Friday, 1 August. The moon was in its First Quarter phase–a phase where, as the name suggests, the moon was between a quarter-moon and  half-moon. 

A First Quarter moon symbolises strength and intention. Fitting, considering the long and challenge-filled process of bringing Astronite to life. 

Sound doesn’t travel in space; communication is difficult at the best of times, impossible at the worst. Chelsea Rosabell Loh (26S06J) may have been on Earth, but that didn’t make her task of coordinating between the different student booths any easier. 

Out of the 20 booths at Astronite this year, only 4 were from RI Y5-6, with the rest being from a mix of RI Y1-4, RGS, VJC, and more. 

“Communication was hard. At times, with some schools there was a bit of a breakdown,” she reveals, grimacing slightly at the memory. “Last year, we’d already had some issues with communication, so some of us were wary about bringing in other schools. But we persisted and did it anyway.” 

Emphasising quality over quantity this year, Chelsea created a guide to booth-making, hoping to set out stronger expectations and clear up any confusion. Looking around the hall, it was clear her efforts were not in vain.

Booths boasting memory games, origami spaceships, wooden and clay models of planets lined the walls, manned by smiling students still hurrying to wolf down their dinner. Some bore fairy-lights, streaking across black boards like a mini, personal galaxy; others showed off planetary cut-outs, bright splotches of colour that almost gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights. 

But Astronite is not about the booths, or the pretty decorations, or the Kahoot game that concluded the hall segment of the night. It’s not even about the stars. It’s about the people. 

And the people? They were smiling, laughing, dragging their friends from booth to booth as they tried to collect stamps to exchange for prizes. Furrowing their brows in confusion at a particularly difficult puzzle, groaning in belated enlightenment at a wrongly-answered Kahoot question. Trickling in from a long day of training, or the long journey over from their respective schools, tired yet curious. Tired, yet excited. 

And to think Astronite nearly didn’t happen this year. Astronomy Club, previously considered a more popular “second CCA”, was heavily impacted by the new one-CCA policy. This year’s intake was much smaller, and with the Y6s having stepped down to prepare for their exams, the Y5 batch found themselves stretched thin. 

“Especially after organising Astrigue earlier in the year, and since Astronite is held so late at night, we were worried it would be very tiring,” Chelsea recounts. “At first, our teachers suggested scaling down in order to focus on our own club instead of larger events like this.”

“But RI hosts Astronite every year without fail,” she says. “Without it,  what other event would we have where all these schools can come together and appreciate astronomy?” 

Even so, the event wasn’t without its hang-ups. Students could participate in game booths to earn points, which could be in turn exchanged for prizes. Except the top prizes—moon lamps—had gone missing. 

“We can’t find the moons,” Tiffany Teo (26S03K) announced just minutes before the event started. “I don’t know where they are.” 

After a lot of panicking and hurried searching, the moon lamps miraculously resurfaced before the end of the event. But the difficulties weren’t over: the projector screen, instead of showing the Kahoot quiz meant to start fifteen minutes ago, was currently stuck on the blue screen of death. 

Despite the hiccups, the quiz did eventually start, and students were able to receive their hard-earned moon lamps. 

Head in the Clouds, Feet on the Ground

First Quarter moons also symbolise development; as the moon grows, so do we. And that was exactly the point of RI’s Astronomy Club: to develop a growing interest in astronomy, to grow the young community of space-enthusiasts around Singapore. 

“Of course we want to provide opportunities for the more competitive students to build on their foundational knowledge and exercise their talents in astronomy,” Vice-chair Janhvi (26S06P) says. “But there’s also the more ‘grassroots’ side of things: getting people to know what astronomy is about and appreciate it more.” 

“Less than half [of Astronomy Club members] are seriously competitive about astronomy, most of us just want to have fun,” comments Chelsea. “And the awareness that astronomy is a niche interest makes us want to advocate for it even more.”

But of the dozens of CCAs RI has to offer, why join Astronomy in the first place? 

Astronomy is the scientific study of space. It’s filled with complicated equations, hundreds of niche facts, and more math than anyone should ever be subject to in a lifetime. It’s a confusing, cold science.

And yet. There is an undeniable romance to astronomy: late nights spent staring out at the sky, tracing the constellations with a look, a finger, a whispered explanation; squinting through a telescope, knees stained with grass, protesting the awkward position; looking up at the vast expanse of inky darkness, realising the scale of the universe. 

For Muhammad Arif Zakir Bin Muhamm (26S06B), it’s that sense of vastness that drew him to astronomy. 

“To think of how big everything is, compared to how small we are—it’s a very humbling experience,” he says. “Some people may think that being this small speck in the entire universe, we’re pretty much meaningless. But if I am just one small man, then my problems are even smaller.”

“But,” he adds, “even though we’re really small, if we can find someone we have a huge impact on—that’s really humbling.” 

We are too late to map the seas, too early to sail the stars; but perhaps we are all just in time to know each other. That human connection, the mutual understanding that comes from common interests and shared moments, sits at the core of Astronomy Club’s purpose. It’s why, despite the numerous challenges, the club persevered in organising Astronite this year. 

“The astronomy scene in Singapore is very small,” Arif notes. “As a community, we’re very niche, so when we find people who share the same passion for astronomy—we really go all out for each other.”

“We really enjoy sharing the love of astronomy,” Alyssa Ang Ke Xin (26S05A) echoes. Her booth, teaching others how to fold origami spaceships, reflects the CCA’s goal of making astronomy more approachable to non-enthusiasts. “Origami is accessible for everyone.” 

As the MPH segment of Astronite drew to a close, students began moving to the hockey field for the fan-favourite stargazing session. The weather had pulled through, leaving the skies relatively clear and the grass flood-free. Telescopes stood scattered around the field, while several Astronomy members shared a constellation-identifying app from their phones. 

Some students were content to lay on the grass, bags under their heads, and simply take in the view; others laughed and cheered as they threw glow sticks at each other, competing to see who could form the largest ring or toss it highest up in the air. 

“I was astronomically starstruck,” a student from Evergreen Secondary School says about Astronite as a whole, laughing unabashedly at her own joke. Her friends chime in with puns of their own: It was an “out-of-this-world experience”, “astrologically amazing”, “astroningly astonishing”. 

“It’s been quite insightful to think about the sky above us,” Loh Yi Yang Caden (26S06B) comments on his experience here. “It’s been an interesting and eye-opening experience.” 

“Humans are 97% dead star matter,” Jahnvi shares. “Astronomy is a way of understanding where we come from.” 

Where do we come from? A mother’s womb, nurtured by months of measured nutrition; a long line of ancestors, a combination of their best and most stubborn traits; some greater power, out there in the cosmos, forever beyond our reach?

We may never truly know. But we do know one thing: no matter where we came from, or where we may end up—we stand under the same sky, looking up at the same stars. Now, and always.