Night Vision
Here forms, here colors, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point, and that point is so marvelous a thing!
-Leonardo Da Vinci, his notebooks
It staggers me that we can actually see our galaxy in detail from here on Earth.
The universe for me became real the first time I beheld, in the same field of view, a half Moon, its shadows giving away the sun’s position, and the orange dot of Mars way off.
Jupiter and Saturn are particularly rapturing, little Christmas bulbs of furious storms, but seen from earth appear as graceful bands of warm colors. Two giants, orange, golden, nearly frozen, bathing in the sun.
Each time I’ve seen those two planets with my own eyes, the universe has gotten smaller and smaller. First, when my father pointed out their little dots in the sky, then when I saw them through my brother’s telescope.
They’re reference points. Here we are, and there’s all the rest of it. And we’re all here together. Our place in the universe.
I hardly expected encountering the most striking reminder yet of our place in the universe during a recent trip through suburban Ohio.
Stopped near Cleveland to crash with my relatives, Caitlin and I were watching water stumble down a shallow river bed, lit by golden streetlight, when my aunt and uncle beckoned us away.
“You gotta check these guys out.”
We headed towards two guys in long sleeves fiddling with a large telescope and two TV screens.
“Aliens!” One of them exclaims. We shuffled beside them. A line of ordered white dots were dancing across one screen. On the other was a map of the night sky. The TVs sat on a block of wood, balanced on a cardboard box atop a little middle school AV cart.
A posterboard, propped up against the cart, was full of hand-written phrases. “What We Can See” in blue. “This treasure is yours for taking” in red.
I wondered what the heck my aunt and uncle got us into.
One of the men, tall, skinny, with short gray hair, little round glasses, a studious face, noticing that he’s gathered a crowd, activated, explaining that we were watching a series of satellites through his telescope, which had a live video feed connected to the TVs in front of us.
His focus and clear excitement at what was on the screen, up in the sky, was so singular that I couldn’t tell if he really saw us standing there.
This is the domain of Don Himes, an amateur but experienced stargazer. He was out that night, like he is every chance he gets, pointing his rig at cool things in the sky and talking about them to anyone who will come by and listen. He’s done this since 1985, I learned from another poster board taped to his cart.
“Let’s see what else we can see,” he transitioned, grabbing a little notepad with paragraphs headed by big bold markings like “M31” and “M15”. These are objects in the Messier catalogue, a list of noticeable visual objects in the night sky. “Ah, let’s go to this globular star cluster.”
A tap on his phone magically turned the telescope towards another part of sky. He returned his notepad to the cart, next to a Starbucks cup and, for some reason, a few ping pong balls.
The live feed screen then focused on the burst of light from 100,000 stars.
He said something about how some researchers believe that some star clusters are the remnants of older galaxies swallowed up by the Milky Way. My arms and legs reminded me that I was wearing short sleeves and shorts in the middle of a chilly night.
I asked him to show me the Andromeda Galaxy - which he does. But it was far enough away that smoke from the latest wildfires out west kept us from seeing real jaw-dropping definition. I started getting colder. And then-
“Let’s see Jupiter” he suggested, looking not at us but up. He replaced a lens. Then, into focus on the live feed screen came the most beautiful live image of Jupiter that I might ever see.
I could make out nearly 10 distinct bands of peach and white, even the Great Red Spot. I made out a moon - Io!
He then took us to Saturn, no moons visible, but you could see the planet’s shadow against its rings.
And I was brought back light years to that first time I saw the sun’s shadow against the moon.
Our universe, in my eyes. I could have stayed out all night watching it.
It’s a crapshoot at best whether a lot of us are able to see the stars at night. I’m not even talking Milky Way dark, just dark enough (and clear enough, with these wildfires lately) to see a bright little dot that we understand to be Mars or Jupiter.
But in Northeast Ohio, the gamble isn’t as much your nighttime visibility as it is whether or not Don Himes will be in your town, with his jerry-rigged observatory, ready to blow your mind.
What does he hope people come away with?
“The reality of it and the accessibility of it,” he told me. “I’m just a factory worker, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. But I can bring the tools here, and all of this is within reach” for regular folks who are curious enough to stick around and brave some chilly air.
All worthwhile to bring the universe within reach.
Find out when Don Himes will be in your area in Ohio/Pennsylvania
