Clouds give way to stars, right on cue

This is Alumni Weekend at Hiram College and, as is becoming traditional, Friday night we hosted a special stargazing event for alums. Recently the weather has been mostly-cloudy, rainy, even stormy and Friday was no exception. It appeared stargazing would be canceled due to cloudy conditions but, because a few alumni may have wanted to simply visit Stephens Memorial Observatory, I opened the place. Good thing I did. As the first group of visitors arrived -- excited, even raucous mostly older folks -- the sky to the south cleared and Saturn manifested himself! And so, as visitors came and went, we presented decent views of the Ringed World until the scheduled closing time of 11:00 PM. Wouldn't you know it, the sky clouded over and Mother Nature put an end to the show herself and on time! Approximately 44 visitors, including a group of about eight current college students, got nice views of Saturn and some of its moons.

The next night was a scheduled Public Open Night at Stephens and, true to form, a storm system had spread clouds across the Great Lakes Region. I was pretty sure skies would be too cloudy for Saturday night stargazing but, remembering the previous night's experience, I opened the observatory as planned. Within minutes after opening the dome a small patch of relatively-clear sky was replaced by thick clouds rolling in from the north. I expected to close before anyone arrived. Nope. First a couple, then a family, then another group of folks arrived as darkness fell. Clouds still ruled the sky, so I talked about the telescope and the observatory and answered some questions.

I took regular peeks through the open dome, hoping for a "sucker hole" in the overcast. After a while a bright star appeared directly overhead, peering through. Visitors excitedly pointed at a few dimmer stars as they made an appearance. Finally, in the southern sky, Saturn! Thinking cloud cover might interfere at any time, I ushered folks quickly to the eyepiece for some very nice views of the planet. We were able to see the Cassini Division, some hints of cloud bands in Saturn's atmosphere, and, again, a nice assortment of moons. It wasn't over.

Instead of clouding over, the sky cleared and we were presented with a sky full of stars and pretty good seeing conditions! I moved the telescope and quickly found the Hercules Globular Cluster (M13) overhead. The star cluster was glorious in the eyepiece. Viewed at about 129X, the globular filled the field of view with diamond dust and impressed viewers.

Next I moved the scope to view the Ring Nebula (M57) which, in the past, I have generally found easy to locate. That night, however, I fished and fished in Lyra and could not seem to find, what I call, the gray donut. Just as I was about to dismiss the last several visitors -- Voilà -- the Ring appeared in the eyepiece, bigger and brighter than I had ever seen it before! I was experimenting with a new two-inch zoom eyepiece by Baader Planetarium company and it really paid off.

It was well after 11:00 when the last of the approximately 20 visitors left but a fine and rewarding night indeed; a night that I had nearly written off as best spent watching old movies on TV.

On astrology, I always say...

At a recent observatory Public Night a visitor asked if I could recommend books on "astrology" and I told her no. There are, however, many excellent books on astronomy. As I always say, astrology is astronomy's illegitimate parent.