My God! It's full of stars!

I'm writing this from the library of New Mexico Skies, the astronomy retreat I've been imagining for over a year now, in Mayhill, NM. Last night I stayed in Baltimore with my dear friend from seminary (and since), Rev. Dr. Kenneth Kovacs, who was kind enough to let me crash at his place and then take me to BWI airport this morning. Twelve hours later and by way of Houston, El Paso, and the Walmart in Alamogordo, I arrived here.

I'm staying in a cabin that is a converted RV. It's small, but really very nice and quite adequate to my needs. Well, after I got settled in, had a bite to eat, and flipped through the tv channels (it's satellite, so they get more than 4!), I decided I'd check out the night sky.

Oh. My. God!

It is just spectacular! I don't even know where to begin to describe it. (Mr. Woods, my expository writing teacher from high school would not be pleased.) The Milky Way arches gloriously over head, every bit fulfilling it's name. Not only are the star fields in it vastly brighter than the best nights at home, but the dark clouds of gas and dust the block the deepest and brightest parts of the galaxy from our view are clear and distinct. And that was facing  north, toward the faint part! I got to a place where I could see to the south, toward Sagittarius. Oh. My. God! I've just never seen anything like it. I had my binoculars with me, and looked at M22, a globular star cluster, and it just popped out in the sky, not as an obscure fuzzy blob, but crisp and clear and giving the impression that it's actually a 3-D object.

I meandered toward the observing field, looking up almost the whole way. I probably swallowed a few bugs because my mouth was just hanging open. I was laughing and almost weeping as I went along. The observing area is about the size of a football field with about a dozen and a half observatory domes. Most of these are enabled for remote use through the internet, but some house equipment for local use.

Let me stop for a minute and say that the weather forecast for tonight was clear early, then clouds and wind and storms. As I meandered I noticed a dark patch creeping across the Milky Way that wasn't there before. Yes, it was a cloud. Now the thing that made me laugh about this, well, the two things, are that it always gets cloudy when I threaten to observe, but more to the point this time, the cloud was black! Clouds are never black back home at night. They are gray or orange or pink. This one was black. You know what that means? NO LIGHTS SHINING UP ON THE CLOUDS FROM UNDERNEATH!

Okay, so any way, I sat down and gawked some more that the sky. The most amazing thing I saw was the Andromeda Galaxy. This is the most distant object that can be seen with the naked eye, at something like 2.3 million lightyears. I've seen it at home before, naked eye even, and with my binocs. Tonight with those same binocs it was jaw-dropping. It's HUGE! The halo extends forever, almost a full field of view, which is like 5 degrees, which is like 10 times the apparent width of a full moon! The core was bright and clear, and if I didn't know better, I'd say I could almost make out some spiral structure -- with my binoculars! I can't do that with my 8" telescope at home.

By this time the clouds had made it almost halfway across the sky. Eventually, they covered everything. So my first night observing came to an abrupt end, but I am still satisfied. This sky must be like the one under which Abraham stood when God said, "Count the stars if you can -- I promise you will have that many descendants!" I am always drawn into God's presence and compelled to give God praise when I am under the night sky, and I tell you, God is good!

Can't wait to see what happens the rest of the week. It's supposed to be good weather. Soli Deo gloria!

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