Although much of my observing over many years has been devoted to the search for comets, recently Wendee and I have become more active in encouraging other people to enjoy the sky as much as we do. To accomplish this goal, ten years ago we created the National Sharing the Sky Foundation. Within this organization (www.sharingthesky.org) we conduct all our outreach activities, including public astronomy observing sessions. These events can be held to celebrate unusual events like eclipses of the sun and moon, transits of planets like Mercury and Venus, and even occasional meteor showers.
Besides these occasional events, Sharing the Sky conducts three annual happenings to which we look forward very much. One of them takes place every month at the Corona foothills middle school on S. Houghton Road in Corona de Tucson. The school has an observatory, from which Voyager, a lovely 14-inch diameter telescope, shows off the night sky each month. Children and adults from all over the Vail school district assemble for a sky watching session we call “the Vail Astronomy Un-club.” Our club has no membership list, does not collect dues, and exists only as a mechanism to help these children enjoy the sky.
At many of these sessions, Voyager has shown the moon, Jupiter and Saturn and Venus, beautiful clusters of stars like Messier 15, and distant galaxies such as the Andromeda galaxy to our groups. Like all telescopes, Voyager has the ability to look back in time as well as it looks across space. It shows us the Moon as it appeared about a second ago and the planets as they appeared a few hours ago. Old Messier 15 shines at us from a distance of about 33,000 light years, and when I write “old” I mean old; at approximately 12.5 billion years of age, Messier 15 is one of the oldest structures in the universe. Finally, when we look at the great Andromeda Galaxy, we see it as it appeared some 2 million years ago; its light takes that long to reach us.
Each Vail Astronomy Un-club meeting begins with a brief lecture during which I try to place the evening activities into a sort of perspective. Sometimes I will talk about how legendary comet searcher Charles Messier worked to find and list the many objects in his catalog as he searched for comets, or how Jean Baptiste de Saron, while awaiting execution by the guillotine near the end of Robespierre’s reign of terror, managed to calculate the orbit for one of Messier’s newly discovered comets and allowed him to continue observing his discovery. But more often than not, I try to connect the night sky to other aspects of the children’s lives; since they have to study English as well as science, I always end by quoting some poetry that relates to the night sky. Shakespeare’s famous opening lines in Henry VI, part one, are especially apt:
“Comets, importing changes in times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky.”
For sharing the Sky’s second annual event, we join forces with the Tucson amateur astronomy Association to conduct a public Star night at some spot in Tucson. These nights often see a collection of 40 or more telescopes, each one peering at a different object in the sky. These annual events are also fundraisers to help provide our foundation with the resources it needs to continue its work.
Our third major annual event is the Adirondack astronomy retreat. Held at Twin Valleys camp in the Adirondack Mountains, south of Plattsburgh, New York, this weeklong event brings together a group of star sky gazers anxious to observe the night sky under the best possible conditions. When the sky is at its best, we do not need a telescope to spot the Andromeda Galaxy; we just look up and it’s there. Wendee arranges an afternoon session of informal lectures each day, but the focus of this event is the magic of the night sky.
If it weren’t for Wendee, there would be no “Sharing the Sky.” When I first met her in 1992 she was a professional teacher of physical education. Wendee has the patience and skill to handle our events with the panache that makes them unique and unforgettable. Sharing the sky with others is really what our astronomy is all about.
For more information visit the National Sharing the Sky Foundation at: www.sharingthesky.org
