Today we’d like to introduce you to Grant Tandy.
Hi Grant, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Growing up in Sisters, Oregon, I was surrounded by dark skies without fully understanding how unusual that was compared to most of the world. As a kid, I was constantly asking questions about how things worked and why, but it wasn’t until high school that astronomy really clicked for me. I started paying closer attention to the night sky and realized that something I had always taken for granted was actually a resource that many people rarely, if ever, get to experience in the modern age.
Once I understood that, I became obsessed with learning more. The night sky felt like the perfect place for my curiosity to go because every answer seemed to lead to another question. My college Astronomy professor Bob Grossfeld hired me to work at the Oregon Observatory, I began to realize how much I enjoyed sharing what I was learning with other people. It’s really rewarding watching someone see Saturn through a telescope for the first time, or helping them understand that the faint patch of light they were looking at was an entire galaxy millions of light years away.
The Oregon Observatory is where I learned how much I enjoyed making astronomy approachable for people who might not know anything about it yet. I found that I liked the human side of astronomy just as much as the science itself, especially those moments when something abstract suddenly becomes real for someone.
Over the years, that grew into a career that has included telescope programs, astrophotography, private stargazing experiences, school and community events, and working with tourism organizations and other groups throughout Central Oregon. I helped start and run astronomy programming at the Hopservatory at Worthy Brewing in Bend, since 2017, which became another way to bring people into astronomy in a setting they might not normally expect. I also serve as a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador and stay involved in Dark Sky Oregon advocacy.
Today, most of my work still comes back to the same thing that first drew me in. I get to help people slow down, look up, ask questions, and experience the night sky for themselves. The curiosity I had as a kid turned into a career, and that still feels pretty wild to me.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Doing what you are passionate about can be a double edged sword. I would not give it up for anything, but like anything else, your level of interest can ebb and flow. When you spend so much time around the same ideas and concepts, it can sometimes be harder to feel that same sense of awe as often as you did in the beginning, when everything was new. Part of the challenge is finding ways to keep that curiosity alive and reconnect with what made you excited about it in the first place.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Night photography became a way for me to capture things our eyes cannot fully see and share that experience with other people. A camera can reveal detail, color, and structure in the night sky that is there all along but mostly invisible to us.
It also fit naturally with what I was already doing. Astrophotography means staying up late, getting away from city lights, finding truly dark skies, and spending a lot of time outside. I was already out there doing that anyway, so photography became a way to bring something back from those nights and share it with people who might not otherwise have that experience.
I enjoy that the images can be more than just something beautiful to look at. They can make people curious about what is above them and hopefully encourage them to get outside, find a dark sky, and experience that resource for themselves. That connection between photography, astronomy, and helping people appreciate the night sky is something I am proud of.
Having an Earth based perspective in my work is also important to me. Isolated deep sky objects are incredible to photograph, but connecting them to a landscape can make them feel more tangible. Sometimes that means using long lenses and tracking equipment to capture an object near the horizon in relation to a mountain or other familiar feature. I did that with Comet NEOWISE, for example. That sense of scale and place helps connect something distant in space to the world we actually live in.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Building a career around astronomy, photography, and public outreach is not exactly a conventional path, and a lot of it has meant creating work for myself rather than following a clearly defined ladder.
If I am curious about something, believe in an idea, or think an opportunity could lead somewhere meaningful, I am usually willing to accept some uncertainty. Conversely, there is always risk in choosing the “safe” option. You can avoid uncertainty, but you can also miss the chance to build something that actually feels like your own.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.granttandy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tandytimes
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-tandy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@granttandy7026
