When you look up at night, what do you see? You see the space between the stars, and then you see the stars themselves. And, depending on where you are and how much artificial light surrounds you, sometimes those stars just seem to come alive.

In this context, a star is not some Hollywood stud or starlet, but, stars are born from gas clouds, shine by nuclear fusion, and then die. Further, that life is a delicate balance between the opposing forces of gravity and pressure.

These forces are studied by astronomers around the world. Steven Kawaler, professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State, is one such person. Even in today’s technologically dependent society, we need observers such as Kawaler just as much as we need the tools to see.

Why? Well, just as beautiful as they are mysterious, the cosmos are also dangerous. Only last week an asteroid named 2009 DD45 was just a “close shave” from earth, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Passing very close to earth, it was 48,800 miles away at its closest point, which was over Tahiti of French Polynesia. To a layman such as myself, this still sounds like a massive number. To an expert like Kawaler, however, this is big news.

In speaking with him about this celestial close call, I have come to realize that his passion for stars means more to the rest of us than we could possibly will ever know. Movies like 1998’s “Armageddon” or Clint Eastwood’s “Space Cowboys” have glorified the ol’ asteroid hitting earth scenario.

Apparently, this is something Hollywood did get right — and, apparently, we should be worried about it. Kawaler uses a 1908 example of a meteor bursting in the air over what is now called the Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia. It is known as the Tunguska Event.

“Seismic records indicate that meteor had as much power as an air burst nuclear explosion,” he said. He says he would hate to have seen what would have happened had the celestial event, instead, occurred in 1950, at the height of the Cold War.

“The Soviet reaction may have very well been to launch a counterstrike against the U.S. [having assumed that they were being attacked],” Kawaler said. He also said that “since 1968, the technology has been good enough for a country to know that it isn’t being blown up” if struck from space.

But this is a great example of why we need galaxy observers — and at the risk of sounding comic book-like, these guardians of the sky. 2009 DD45 is a “signal that we constantly need to be looking for things before they pass us and not after, to avoid that ‘armageddon.’” 2009 DD45 wasn’t seen until after.

“Normally, we find these things after they have already buzzed past us. If it was targeting closer, we wouldn’t have known unless it hit. If it was one as big as the one that is believed to have taken out the dinosaurs, it would be a global event with at least as much power as a hydrogen bomb.”

While I do not know how the world would react if one day we found ourselves on a collision course with cosmic fragments, or if anything could be done to avoid inevitable death and destruction, at least we have people watching the skies who are trying to sort all that out.

Events like this don’t happen regularly, Kawaler tells me. Some stars are interesting and some aren’t, he explains.

“A boring star just sits there, like the sun; there are no vibrations — there is no activity.” However, with continually improving technology we are “noticing them more.”

For example, the green star Lulin — discovered only several weeks ago — was spotted before it passed earth and delighted observers in the last week of February before it passed by. “These events are not predictable. Sometimes there are a lot and sometimes there are only a few with a big interval in between.”

That being said, I have come to realize something else in talking shop with Kawaler: “Compared to 20 years ago, people are paying less attention than they used to. Shuttle launches are now routine, whereas 20 years ago they were still a novelty.”

While I have always scoffed at the millions and millions of dollars that NASA is budgeted on both project by project and annual bases, I have to admit that maybe I won’t do so much scoffing anymore.

 — Erin Mastre is a graduate student in landscape architecture from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.