On Saturday night a friend of mine brought us along to help her complete a homework assignment for her astronomy class. Buried inaccessibly in the heart of a golf course in downtown Peoria, Illinois is an observatory. This isn't a planetarium, mind you, with its painted sky. This is a bullet-shaped building like the Deep Impact-variety disaster films, with a vertical slit just wide enough for a high-powered telescope to search the heavens. The task was to spend an hour there and record whatever you see.
Some of the things that she didn't record were:
1. All the finest visitor accommodations a haunted mansion could offer. To reach the parking lot we drove through a half mile of pure gravel road that would decapitate a bobblehead doll. The lot was pitch black, but fortunately there was a trickle of stagger-tripping humans from a grove of nearby trees as a clue. After a couple hundred yards the structure loomed in the distance atop a hill, emitting a weak yellowish glow from a single light bulb ten feet off the ground. Despite the best ankle-lashing efforts of the guardian weeds, we arrived safely.
2. The telescope operator who was living his boyhood dream. Armed with the stereotypical scientist's high-pitched voice, he talked anxiously (to us or to the telescope, it wasn't clear) about the drama of catching Saturn just before it dipped below the horizon. He urged Saturn to show itself with the enthusiasm of a six-year old, as if he hadn't done this a hundred times in the last two weeks. He now holds the distinction of being the only man I've ever encountered without seeing his face.
Regardless of your thoughts on the origin of the universe, it is humbling to think of our tiny size in the vastness of space. If you find yourself in a country setting some time, away from the shroud of light pollution, take a few minutes and let your eyes wander across the sky.
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