We got to do such a cool thing on Tuesday evening!
At about the same time as I joined the choral group, Tom signed up for a Thursday-evening class about studying the night sky, which was held over at Sierra Community College, nearby. It was taught by a local amateur astronomer, Don Machholtz.
I've been star-struck since the fourth grade when Mr. Woodhouse brought his homemade telescope to school and showed us sunspots. At UCLA, I took a general astronomy course from a well-known astronomer, George Abell , which I loved. Of course, it was a whole lot more challenging than I had imagined, involving a lot of physics, chemistry, and higher math, for which I was somewhat unprepared. Fortunately, there was Tom, and Chet Herbst to help me through. It was not so much about star-gazing as gaining an appreciation of the vastness and complexity of the universe.
Tom was interested in the sky, as well, and along the way, we bought a small telescope, through which we could see not only our moon, but the moons of Saturn. We gave it away, some time back, but a couple of years ago, Tom splurged on a beautiful, 8-inch Celestron with a computer and a motor in it to help find things and follow the rotation of the sky (earth). Wow!
One of the most wonderful features of our geographical location here in the foothills is the amazing night sky! So many stars!! Too much light in our old neighborhoods in SoCal to see much. So, this class seemed like the perfect thing to enhance our appreciation of our beautiful view and new telescope!
Tom learned quite a lot from Don, in the classes. Don, real estate appraiser by day, is a world-class sky guy at night. He has his name on about 10 comets, which means he either discovered them first or near first. He's traveled the world to monitor astronomical phenomena! So, for the last class, he invites students in small groups (spread over several nights) to his home and observatory to catch glimpses of the sky through his own scopes: a giant set of homemade binocs (on a stand), a six-inch telescope, and an 18-inch telescope. He lives about 1/2 hour from here, on a hilltop in Colfax, and has a wonderful wide-angle view of the sky.
There was no moon, that night (that is to say, it was the new moon), and it was very clear. Perfect! Several students, like Tom, came each with a significant other. We were all dazzled as he moved from scope to scope, training each on a different object in the sky, round-robin fashion. As Tom had reported to me over the course of the class, Don knows the sky so well, that he knows exactly where each (of thousands of visible features) can be found and quickly zeroes in one, and then another, as if he were pointing out flowers in his garden.
We saw globular clusters (bottom photo), the Andromeda galaxy (top), other galaxies, nebulae--Veil (middle) and Ring, Venus, Saturn (+moons), Uranus, Neptune, red stars, blue stars, the Pleiades and many others--even a comet! He kept finding more and more fun things to look at as the night wore on. In two hours, we had racked up quite a list of objects, all fascinating! It was as fun to watch him work as it was to look at the stars, I should say. He's had a life-long love affair with the sky and it shows!
One funny thing I mentioned aloud, as people were gathering at the beginning of the evening, was that, since it was already dark, I was meeting folks in the dark and in the dark we would stay. I never saw the faces of the people who were there Tuesday night. We talked, and laughed, and oohed and ahhed together, but I wouldn't recognize a singe one of them by sight in brighter circumstances.
It was a fun sky party! I was blown away by the objects we could see through the scopes, especially the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the Veil Nebula and the globular clusters (long-time faves)! Now, we need to study at home, with our dandy 8-inch, so that when you come for a visit, we can show you a fun time in the dark, as well...
