Living in a city, the lights block out the stars. Sometimes I can make out some of the brighter stars I know, and I can usually pick out the Big Dipper and Orion. I remember many nights of stargazing as a kid, but now, living in a city, there are no stars to see. My wife uses the Dark Sky Map to find the optimal place to see the Northern Lights. I used it to find the best camping spot for our recent trip to Arizona. While I was scanning Southern Arizona for the darkest places, I noticed something on the map just west of Tucson – Kitt Peak National Observatory. I envisioned a massive observatory, like the ones on Hawaii or the PBS science specials. A quick Google search and I found out that the Observatory runs a public stargazing program. My wife and I immediately reserved our spots.

Kitt Peak National Observatory

The drive up the mountain is worth it alone. The steep road climbs an ear-popping 3000 feet and has sheer drop-offs with amazing views of the desert. The mountain itself if a sacred mountain for the Tohono O’odham. Up at the top, there are about 20 large observatories, each with different specs and research missions. I wished we had arrived sooner in the day to tour the observatory, but we had been exploring Saguaro National Park that morning, I didn’t realize that we could have spent time on top of the mountain during the daylight.

The Program

Upon arrival, we were instructed to put our phones on airplane mode and to park our cars in a single file line. The program guides started covering up our headlights with thick paper. The cellular signals and light from our headlights interfere with the research being conducted on the mountain. They told us that, after the program, we would drive done the winding mountain road without our headlights. With this little anxiety at the back of my mind, we went to the visitor center, checked out the displays, and watched a fantastic documentary about light pollution while we ate our dinner. Then we headed out to watch the sunset.

The wind really started to pick up. On the mountain top, there was at least a 30 degree difference in temperature from Tucson. It was cold! I grabbed our sleeping bags from the car and we wrapped up. We looked ridiculous huddled in our sleeping bags, but the sunburned family in shorts must have been really jealous. Our guides walked us up to the ridge facing the west and treated us to a fantastic sunset (no green flash), a talk about the sun and details about the telescopes and some of the research taking place on the mountain.

Back in the warmth of the visitors center, all the lights had been dimmed and red lights turned on. We all got a red light flashlight and the guides passed out binoculars and star charts for a session of binocular star gazing. The trouble with binocular stargazing for me is that I can’t seem to hold the binoculars steady. I can see the stars, but they are jumping all over the place because my body is swaying or my arms or shaking. I have always felt that I have horrible night vision, but the guide told us about using our peripheral vision instead of looking at the star straight on. This helped a lot!

We looked at Jupiter, several stars and clusters in Orion, the Big and Little Dippers, and some celestial bodies in Cancer. I was surprised at how much I remembered from the classes I took as a kid at Kingman Museum. The family in shorts were no longer with the group.

For the second half of the program, we divided up into groups and went to different telescopes. We went to an open air telescope. I wish I remembered the specs of the telescope – they had various displays showing the size of the telescopes at the site. Apparently you can even visit the really big research ones during the day, but our telescope was big enough. One of the guides said she almost broke the telescope we used on her first day, mentioning that it was an $80,000 scope. Cheap compared to the other technology around the place.

Our group kept getting smaller and smaller as people abandoned the deck for the warmth of a classroom below. Lucky for us, because this meant we could take longer looks, and our guide could show us more images. We still had our sleeping bags, so we stayed outside the entire program.

By Montebest (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What We Saw

Our first object we viewed was Iota Cancri, a binary star system in the constellation Cancer, and a pair of binary stars (that’s four stars total) in the Big Dipper, Mizar & Alcor. We talked about the double sunset during Star Wars when Luke was bummed out about being stuck on Tatooine. These system could have sunsets like that.

April marks the beginning of galaxy season (determined by the direction the Earth is facing) and we saw a lot of galaxies – the Sombrero Galaxy (looked more like a cigar to me), the Beehive Cluster (not a galaxy but a big bunch of stars), the Whirlpool Galaxy (two galaxies colliding), and another galaxy similar in structure to the Milky Way. We also took a look at Jupiter (the red spot was on the other side).

At first glance in the telescope, I was disappointed. I expected a Hubbell telescope sort of image. Our guide showed us a photo he was taking of one of the objects we looked at. This image was a ten hour exposure and looked more Hubbell-like. It makes sense – there is not a lot of light coming from these objects – the Hubbell telescope pictures aren’t like an iPhone snap shot. Once I had my expectations adjusted, I enjoyed the experience a lot more.

Our guide was amazing all by himself. He said his parents bought him a telescope a couple years ago. He got hooked. He worked an office job by day, but spent his free time up on the mountain, leading the discovery programs and photographing celestial objects. Amazing what happens when someone discovers a passion.

At the end of the four hour program, we all quickly got into our cars. We tried to keep the car interior light to a minimum. The program, guides led us on a slow procession down the mountain. We were the second car in line, and I was glad that I had another car in front of me to guide me along. A couple miles down the road, the lead car stopped, the guides jumped out and started removing the headlight covers. Then, we could then turn on our lights for the rest of the ride down. Truly an amazing experience!

Visit Kitt Peak National Observatory!
National Observatory Image Gallery
Hubbell Telescope Image Gallery