“Has Saturn come up yet?”

It’s growing dim at 8 p.m. on Thursday, and Elon physics professor Claudine Moreau is scanning the darkening sky above Lake Verona with a bright green, high-beamed laser pointer.

A murmur of no from gathered astronomy and astrophysics students replies, harmonizing with the mechanical whir of their Meade LX90 telescope. Some students stay close to the long black cylinder, while others point their phones over the trees, using the NightSky app to identify celestial objects.

More students arrive, making their way to the colorful blankets arranged in the grass, laying down in pairs or trios. Dusk’s yellow haze fades, slipping into perfect stargazing conditions.

“It’s important to be outside a little bit,” Moreau says. “Look up, not on our phones. Be mindful.”

Elon’s Stargazing for Mental Health event is a collaboration between the university’s Office of Sustainability, Counseling Services, and Historic and Danieley neighborhoods. The only artificial glow tonight is from nearby dorms and from red LED lights placed between blankets. Red light keeps the iris open, making it easier to see faint lights in the sky.

Another light comes from Sam Lindo’s iPad. He’s the social media manager for Elon’s Astronomy Club, and he is weaving through groups of reclining students to show them dazzling photos of nebulas and cosmic formations he’s captured tonight using the university’s Seestar S50 smart telescope.

Lindo is from Bermuda, an island in the Atlantic Ocean with vast stretches of open sky. His passion is astrophotography, and his Seestar imager stacks hundreds of photos over time, making highly detailed shots of the cosmos. He hopes to one day work in a planetarium and continue to combine his artistic eye with scientific insight.

“There’s a beauty in space you don’t have to specifically be in the field to understand,” he says. “Just being able to observe the stars is very tranquil.”

But even Lindo’s island home isn’t immune to light pollution, a phenomenon that brightens the night by 9.6% each year, according to data from the Globe at Night citizen science project.

“Being out here in certain areas,” he gestures to the sky above, “There’s spots where you just can’t see the stars or sky. Even in Bermuda, too.”

Professor Moreau points her laser low in the sky, directing attention to the south as she traces the outline of the Scorpius constellation. The body of the scorpion is visible tonight, she says, but the yellowed glow of the Danieley dormitory’s light in the distance drowns out the curled tail of the constellation.

She taught at Northern Virginia Community College, where she said the sky over the city glowed in artificial pink and orange instead of the natural dark blue. She said she believes public entities should work to reduce skyglow when possible.

“We don’t want the next generation of students to never have been able to see the Milky Way,” she said.

You can’t see the Milky Way over Lake Verona tonight, but students are still captured by the twinkling white pinpricks above. Astronomy Club members turn up the music– galactic-themed– over the nearby speaker. Stargirl Interlude by The Weeknd and Lana Del Rey thumps out over the mosaic of guests.

Applied mathematics major Kalin Hansen sprawls over a pink blanket with friends and gazes up at a bigger dot: the Andromeda galaxy. It’s the nearest major galaxy, and it shines brightest in August and September. Hansen said he attended the event to get a moment away from the rapid pace of the back-to-school season.

“I like being able to take a step back from the stresses of outside life and the pressures to perform,” he said. “We can take a moment to live in the present, and enjoy the things we have.”

As 10 p.m. nears, Saturn finally rises above the trees. Students gather around the club’s telescope for a peek. To the naked eye, it looks like a gleaming star, but the lens of the LX90 reveals a thin band of brightness splitting the brilliant spot. Astronomy club officer Jackson Berkson tells guests it is either the planet’s famous ring or a stretch of its 274 moons.

Annabelle Mwonya peers through the telescope and sighs. A psychology and neuroscience double major, she takes the moment to soak in what Moreau calls the cosmic perspective.

“The billions of stars in the sky is about the same as the amount of neuron connections in our brains,” she says. “So I love that connection. You feel so small and so infinite at the same time.”

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Elon students gain ‘cosmic perspective’ at Stargazing for Mental Health