Lyrid meteor shower and the Alvin Clark 3 ton challenge.

Work has been going great. I'm finally getting checked off on enough stuff that I have a little variety in my day to day even though the majority of my time is still spent in the gift shop. I really kind of like working in there though because I get to talk to all the customers, meet some really cool people, and just surround myself with astronomy.

In fact, last night, I ended up selling two 8 inch Orion dobsonian reflector telescopes. This is the same telescope Austin owns. The first guy who came on had a LOT of questions. I was able to offer him a lot of good advice and talk him through some of the purchases he was thinking about. Turns out, it was his seventieth birthday and his wife had just bought and names a star after him. They were picking up a telescope so they could look up and find his star. This, to me, is just the coolest thing I've ever heard of. When he was asking about what objects you could see with this telescope, I started getting really animated and told him how seeing Saturn through that exact model of telescope changed my life. I described my sudden breathlessness and the really profound realization I had in that instant. He laughed and told me that because of my passion and excitement about this kind of thing, he would get the telescope. He said he could tell I wasn't trying to get him to spend money, I just wanted him to experience that same moment that I did. Which was exactly right! To me, the most exciting part about this job is finding other people who are interested in this stuff. I feel like if I can give them some of my passion and drive, they will be able to experience the beauty of the universe they way I have. Once that happens, there's really no going back to everyday life in the same way. It... Changes you. Different things become important. Things that used to bother you or make you sad or mad don't seem as important after staring deep into the celestial sphere.

After closing the observatory with help from my, again, awesome coworkers I stayed behind to watch the lyrid meteor shower. It was a crystal clear night and in asking around to see if anyone else was staying, I found out that one guy was going to be using the Clark all night long just for viewing and for taking some pictures. I decided to hang out and watch there before heading outside to watch the shower.

I got to see so many deep sky objects... The sombrero galaxy, M104. The black eye galaxy, M64. M3, an AMAZING globular cluster. And so many more I can't remember the names of all of them. Should have written them down... But all of these through the 24" refractor lens were astounding. In M104, I could see the main dust lane pretty clearly and in M3 there were so many individual stars... A lot of them looked blue, which gives me a theory about the age of the stars in that cluster that I'll have to look up soon.

I got to learn a LOT about declination and right-ascension coordinates, and even though I couldn't actually move the telescope myself, I'm not trained to do that yet and you can really destroy that historic piece of equipment if you don't know what you are doing, I got a pretty deep insight into how everything works. My coworker was really cool and put up with all my questions and pretty much at one point just asked what me and his friend visiting from Canada wanted to see. He moved and aimed that telescope over and over and let me tell you, that is NO easy feat. Even though that telescope is near perfectly balanced, it's still 3 tons of metal and glass. Making some of the fine tuned adjustments that he was doing seemed pretty strenuous. After doing deep sky, we turned our "eye" to Saturn which was... Just beautiful. We could clearly see the Cassini division between the rings and about 5 moons. The seeing was so good, he pulled out his camera and started snapping pictures and I'll be honest, even his single, 1/8 second exposures were more clear and brilliant than I've ever seen before. He not only took a ton of still shots, but also recorded a video to be able to stack each frame and come up with something even better.

After we closed down the telescope for the night, about 12:30 am, I headed up to the darkest, clearest spot at the observatory and set up to watch the meteor shower. It was just astounding. My eyes got adjusted after about 30 minutes, as I had already adjusted a bit in the telescope dome, and I saw more stars with my naked eyes than I could have ever thought possible. Every once in a while a meteorite or fireball would streak across the sky, and one was so brilliant and bright, it slowly traversed the sky, going about twice the length of the big dipper before disappearing.

I had about an hour and a half of peering into the cosmos. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I've never gone out and just really paid attention to the stars. I learned some more constellations, though it was so dark up there, I was seeing stars that I had no idea existed. It made finding some constellations harder because stars that I didn't recognize were popping up all over the place. It was a good time of quiet contemplation and I feel like I had some really profound insights just from being there, experiencing it all. It was as if I was staring at the face of the universe and it stated right back. Every once in a while, it would wink, as if to say, "look at the wonders I can hold. The sheer beauty and power and vastness... Just soak it all in" and that's exactly what I did. I experienced and appreciated the night sky like I've never been able to in my life. It will be there long after I'm dead and gone, and at this point I just want to be a part of as much of it as I can. I want to see all the works of art out there that put our greatest creativity to shame, to listen to the cosmic fugue, and to love each burning ball of hydrogen as I do our own.

Go stargazing tonight. Spend a few hours outside and you will not be disappointed. The meteor shower will still be going on, and I will say, it's more than fantastic. Make sure to dress warm though!

As always, be well everyone.