COVER STORY
Looking up! Seeing the beauty of the night sky
By Mark Woolsey Say the idea of looking at the mountains, craters and shadows of the moon gets your interest. Perhaps a distant and colorful nebula inspires awe and wonder. Or maybe the prospect of checking out Saturn and its rings-hanging like a jewel in space-gives you goosebumps. You just might be a future amateur astronomer. Several observatories in Georgia, most of them associated with academic institutions, offer observation
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and research opportunities for students and others seeking astronomical knowledge/ degrees and almost all throw open the doors to the public during non-pandemic times. But what’s more, a healthy number of amateurs-seniors well-represented among them-are increasingly taking astronomy up as a hobby, sometimes spending thousands of dollars on gear. The goastronomy. com and Middle Georgia Astronomical Society websites together list nearly a dozen sky-scanning clubs in the state
NOVEMBER 2020 | AtlantaSeniorLife.com
Experts caution that budding cosmologists will need a healthy dollop of patience-and advance planning as well. But the rewards for being deliberate are spectacular. “The most common reaction is ‘wow,’” said David Dundee, a genial 60-ish astronomer who presides over the 20-inch telescope and observatory at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville (along with its associated planetarium). The observatory has opened with social distancing and safety measures during the pandemic, unlike most others. Their
120-seat planetarium also is open on a limited basis for sky shows. “The most important thing is the ability of a person to come here and put their eye to the telescope and say ‘I can see the rings of Saturn or ‘I am looking up at the Orion nebula,’ “ Dundee said. “To me that’s so much better than being at home (at a computer) and punching buttons and up come pictures.” He said the most popular viewing targets are the moon, Mars and Saturn, as well as Orion and other nebulae (which are giant gas and dust
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