Father Sky - Part 1

While sorting through my box of astronomy files recently, I came across notes and journals from some of my earliest ventures into observing the night sky. Over the years there have been many enjoyable excursions into the dark, but for a city dweller like me, opportunities to get under a truly dark sky are few. Seldom are the conflicts between home, family, and calendar resolved into a relatively clear, dark night under the stars. Fewer still are the occasions when the clarity of the sky is so stunning that one experiences an internal clarity, a moment when the universe suddenly just seems to make sense. I suspect that many amateur astronomers could speak of having these epiphanic moments. Mine occurred in March of 1995.

I had been interested in astronomy for years, but at the time, my only access to the sky was a small observatory at our local community college, located smack in the middle of light-polluted greater Chicagoland. I did not own a telescope then, but rarely did I have a chance to get even a few miles outside the glow anyway. But I did have a pair of 10x50 binoculars and had embarked on the Astronomical League’s Binocular Messier List, struggling in the light fogged skies to find even those that were listed as “easy”. With the prospect of a long new moon weekend, I had traveled from my home in northern Illinois to my parents’ home in central Missouri where I could see the stars as I remembered them from my childhood. As I packed my car for the trip, I made certain to bring the binoculars, along with my charts, logbook and my hopes for clear weather.

The first two nights were disappointing. Pouring rain, and more predicted. I gave up hope and began to plan for the next new moon weekend that I might be able to get away. But later that Saturday, patches of clear sky began to break through. By that evening, a high pressure system swung unexpectedly out of the northwest, bringing colder temperatures and sweeping the last of the clouds away. I stepped outside and what I saw took my breath away.

I had never seen so many stars in all my life. The sky was so transparent as to seem three-dimensional. At first I was hard pressed to pick out the constellations that I had tried to learn from my urban landscape. I raised my binoculars and saw nothing but star soup. Once I got my bearings I navigated my Messier list and found my objects easily, barely taking the time to make notations in my logbook before going on to the next one. I even went back to those objects I had already logged to marvel at them against the striking blackness I had been so long denied. M36, M37, & M38 were an easy sweep through Auriga. In Gemini, M35 practically jumped through the glass. No mere fuzzy patch, the Andromeda Galaxy filled my binoculars, its bright core distinct within its blanket of light. M44 was a naked eye object, a possibility that I had never realized before. Never mind trying to count the Pleiades.

After a while I went back to the house to get my eight year old son. “You have got to see this,” I told him. He came out into the yard and uttered a single “wow”. Then much to my chagrin he said, “Hey, it looks just like the planetarium!”

That year, with my son in tow, I had been volunteering at a small school district planetarium, giving public programs on weekends to introduce people to a sky that many of them had never seen. I pointed out constellations and showed visitors where & when to look for planets. But most of all, I told stories. Stories from cultures all over the world, from a time when people knew the sky well; people whose well-ordered view of the cosmos came from what they saw with only their unaided eyes. Although he had learned much from the experience, my son had not made the connection between the planetarium dome and the real thing. Like most people today, he spends his life under city skies and this view is not part of his awareness.