My first Magazine Sky & Telescope - 03.2019 | Page 86

FOCAL POINT by Joshua Roth
The Night I Forgot My Telescope
And what a night it was.
dark sky far from city lights. The air
was steady, the mosquitoes mercifully
subdued, the only intrusive light bulb
miles away. Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn
framed the deep twilight, and a wan-
ing gibbous moon wouldn’t rise for a
couple of hours. Lists of long-neglected
sky sights assembled themselves in my
mind, like children lining up at an ice-
cream truck.
Too bad I’d forgotten my telescope.
Well, “forgotten” is a stretch. I’d
chosen to leave it at our Vermont vaca-
tion rental, an hour away on winding
Green Mountain roads, because I’d
been tasked with driving teenagers to a
fi reworks display. But room was found
for my charges in other cars, leaving
me with sole dominion over an inviting
hillside lawn — an hour away from my
scope. I pulled my night-driving glasses
from my glove box and lay down to
await the arrival of night.
“If only I’d brought that telescope!”
Who among us stargazers hasn’t felt
a pang of remorse when rooting about
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for a missing eyepiece case or forgotten
counterweight? This ached even more.
Fortunately, I was able to see this
celestial glass as half full: a quiet eve-
ning with a galaxy full of stars to call
my own. I ran my gaze along the silhou-
ettes of distant trees against a slowly
(oh, how slowly!) darkening pink-to-
purple sky. Ruddy Arcturus popped into
view when I relaxed my upward gaze,
soon to be joined halfway across the sky
by sparkling Vega.
As successive waves of ever-fainter
stars declared their presence, I found
myself recalling myriad star-hops of
evenings long past. I regarded with long-
ing the faint star dangling from the Big
Dipper’s handle (a mile marker en route
to the Whirlpool Galaxy), the angled
star pair bisecting Sagitta (a signpost for
the Dumbbell Nebula), and the keystone
denoting Hercules’ trunk (the path
to Messier 13, a glittering star-sphere
where true night never falls). Oh, to
have that telescope on hand!
And yet . . . without it, I was inspired
to give myself a gift I hadn’t enjoyed
in many years: the
simple experience
of watching a star-
fi lled night take over
from a sun-splashed day. Without the
distractions of operating a telescope,
I gazed upon star clouds and ghostly
glows that I’d hardly noticed before,
even though the Cygnus-to-Scorpius
Milky Way is prime hunting ground
at the star parties I attend. Never had
the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud or the
Lagoon Nebula stood out in such bold
relief. Never had the Coathanger so viv-
idly adorned the hinterlands of Vulpec-
ula. Never had I been better able to
follow the stellar steppingstones along
the Swan’s neck or amidst the locks of
Berenice’s hair.
Never, in other words, had I so fully
embraced the journey in lieu of the
destination.
All because I’d forgotten my telescope.
¢ JOSHUA ROTH was an S&T editor
from 1995 to 2006. He now curates on-
line learning experiences for Cengage.
THERE I WAS AT LAST, under a clear,