Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes (Ray Price)
Don’t let the stars get in your eyes,
Don’t let the moon break your heart.
Love blooms at night, in daylight it dies,
Don’t let the stars get in your eyes,
Oh keep your heart for me for someday
I’ll return and you’ll know you’re
The only one I’ll ever love.
It’s My Party And I’ll Gaze If I Want To
Sometimes, exotic events are occurring all around you and you’re not even aware they are happening. Like the Chiefland Star Party, for instance. We wouldn’t be aware it was happening either if Siobhan’s brother, Stuart, didn’t pack up all his cares and woes and head down here about this time every year to a small patch of land about seven miles south of Chiefland to join scores of like-minded people examining the heavens.
This sort of thing has been going on since 1985 when a self-styled astronomer named Billy Dodd began travelling all over hell looking for the appropriate “dark sky” observation site in which to set up shop. He could have gone out west to the deserts, of course, where the stargazing is facilitated by “desert transparency,” but Billy Dodd just wasn’t a desert kind of guy. So he travelled thousands of miles, visiting every nook and cranny from the Everglades to the Georgia border, in search of the darkest skies. And how does a body find the darkest skies, you might ask? Well, old Billy would find a promising spot, pull out the leader in an unexposed roll of film, hold it to the sky for a few moments and then rewind the film, put it in a camera, shoot the roll and develop it. After a year of this sort of tomfoolery, Dodd settled on an 80-acre plot of land just outside Chiefland. In addition to its “darkest skies” qualifications, this land was devoid of the squadrons of mosquitoes you might expect to find just about anywhere in Florida. The land had earlier been cleared for pastures, so the horizons were clear in every direction.
Billy Dodd then got some other astronomers interested in the property. He made available lots in 5-acre parcels for the curious price of $9600 and sold them all within the year. With no one but astronomers on the property, the “darkest skies” could be maintained. There are now three roll-off-roof observatories built on the land and several places where the owners simply roll the entire telescope outside for observing. At least eight different families own land in five and ten acre parcels. They’ve got their own little town out there, hidden in the bowels of Levy County.
The Party Animals
So what happens at a Chiefland Star Party? Well, a whole lotta waitin’, for one thing. If you show up in the daytime, you’ll see the attendees fine-tuning their telescopes, walking the property, lolling in the sun, sharing thoughts with their neighbors. There is a food tent set up for astronomers who prefer not to cook and the chef’s minions ring a big dinner bell when soup’s on.
The star-gazers roll in from all directions in all sorts of conveyances. Some pull up in giant Winnebagos, some arrive in modest automobiles hauling sleeping facilities as tiny as that mobile outhouse Humphrey Pennyworth used to tote around in the old Joe Palooka comic strips. Tents abound. Some people, like Stuart, sleep in their vans. Of course, that would be in the daytime. Everybody is out and about at night. The buzz of activity begins at twilight, when bodies start to emerge from tents and vehicles and the march to the telescopes begins. Being naïve, we always thought astronomers looked right through their telescope lenses directly at the sky and, of course, some do. But many of the current crop are more interested in “imaging,” getting exceptional pictures of the skies—like the ones provided above by Stuart Ellison. These people have their telescopes wired directly to their computers, which are capturing images all night long. When it’s not cloudy, that is. Or hazy. Or anything compromising. Astronomers are VERY fussy about their skies. What you and I see as a beautiful open sky might suffer scoffing and derision from these huffy perfectionists. But that’s okay. The proof is in the pudding. And much of their work is exceptional. When they pull out an image of the spectacular Horsehead Nebula, you probably won’t be mentioning your prized Kodak moment featuring Spot the dog.
The Horsehead Nebula
Parents can be a pain. Like when you’re up in your room with all the blinds drawn and the doors locked reading The Flying Pie and your mother comes banging on your door to push you outside “to go play in the sunshine” instead of occupying your time viewing such rubbish. Our mothers did that, too. Of course, at the time no one realized they were all pawns of the Future Dermatologists Of America, many of whom I’ve been visiting lately for skin repair. Anyway, the next time you run into this problem, we want you to be prepared. We want you to impress Mom with the depth of your knowledge of Things Consequential. And that’s why we’re going to tell you about The Horsehead Nebula.
“The Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula (a huge, diffuse cloud of gas and dust in interstellar space) in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, which is further east on Orion’s Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which is similar to that of a horse’s head when viewed from Earth. The shape was first noticed in 1888 by Williamina Fleming on photographic plate B2312 taken at the Harvard College Observatory.
The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominately behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead’s neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula’s base are young stars just in the process of forming.” (Wickipedia)
So there. After you have this tightly memorized, feel free to confront any parent anywhere—or anyone else, for that matter—deliver your lines and never again be forced to defend your reading matter.
Further Enlightenment From Stuart Ellison
“1800 light years is 2% of the width of our galaxy. It takes light 100,000 years to get from one side to the other. The next nearest galaxy is 2 million light years. You can see it on a dark night—it’s Andromeda and it is part of our “local group” and it’s moving toward us. Eventually, our galaxies will merge into a bigger one. Andromeda’s 100,000 light years across, so the light from the far side of it is 100,000 years older than the light that comes from the closest edge.”
Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You
Usually, Siobhan and I go out to visit Stuart in Chiefland once or twice during the seven day run of the Star Party. We pick up some barbecue or create some lobster rolls and make the less than one hour drive before 5 p.m.—before the astronomers start getting cranked up for the evening. Siobhan makes a titanic effort not to say anything cosmically embarrassing to Stuart around the other campers and we pull out before twilight so we don’t have to turn on the horrible and forbidden car lights.
Just in case you were thinking of paying a visit, better not. The Star Partiers are reluctant to suffer tourists and you don’t speak the same language, anyway. Besides, they told us if we revealed their secret garden they’d be forced to kill us.
What Happened To Wilson?
They—whoever they are—say that nothing enhances the perception of a horse’s value so much as ownership. And that’s probably true. Last week, we told you we thought Wilson (also known as Super Chief) would win his race at Calder. We weren’t the only ones fooled. The guy who picks the races for the Calder program made Wilson a 5-2 morning-line favorite. And the bettors, liking what they saw in the paddock—Wilson being 1 ½ times as big as the other horses—briefly bet him down to 3-2. But sometimes size doesn’t matter and this was one of those times. Wilson broke well, despite banging into another horse just out of the gate, and chased the pace in third about three lengths off the lead for the most part. Coming out of the turn, he made his move, edging up to within two lengths of the leader and one length of the second horse after both of these went head-and-head almost to the eighth pole. Speed occasionally kills, however, and it pretty much killed Wilson, who tailed off a little and was beaten 3 ½ lengths, finishing third.
We thought the duel on the front end—both horses went 45 and change for the half-mile—might kill off the leaders but they both held up well and Wilson just couldn’t catch them. Wilson, by Graeme Hall out of a Jules mare, is more suited for distance, however, where the first half-miles of races are run two to four seconds slower than in sprints like this race. Next race, he’ll be going a mile or more and that should be the true test. If that doesn’t work out, well, there are always jobs with the police department. Or the cart-pulling division of the St. Augustine Tourist Bureau.
The Further Adventures Of Puck And Hanna. And Pogo, Even
Weaning season went well. After a day or so of loudly registering his disbelief that such uncivilized practices as weaning could occur in this day and age, Puck settled into his new life with Shamu and the mules. Hannah, on the other hand, made only a token peep or two before returning to her grazing. Shamu is everybody’s best friend now, though the mules are still regarded with deep suspicion. This afternoon, we bring the mares back to the field opposite—but sufficiently far away from—the weanlings’ current residence. We expect a moderate amount of calling and whining but nothing serious.
Pogo is training forwardly across town. He has finally accepted getting his feet done on the left side but, for some reason, doesn’t appreciate the same treatment on the right. The horse psychiatrist says he just going through a phase. He’s galloping well, however, and picking up most of his lessons like a smart horse. We have no doubt he’ll be the next Greatest Horse In The World.
That’s all, folks…
