PIMA COUNTY (April 15, 2024) -- A tiny dot glided serenely through the darkness of space. Faint as it was, it was impossible to miss amid the stillness of the stars. Hundreds of miles below, a small crowd stood in the parking lot of the Juan Santa Cruz Picnic Area and watched the dot creep across the evening sky until it faded from view.
“I would wager that’s a satellite,” said Phil Yehle, a volunteer with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (TAAA). “It’s too dim to be the Space Station and too fast to be a plane.”
The solar eclipse may be over, but the night sky offers numerous other marvels. Pima County is a haven for amateur astronomers of all ages thanks to local dark-sky ordinances and numerous parks far from city lights.
The County sponsors free stargazing events like the one on April 5 at Tucson Mountain Park every month. Volunteers from TAAA set up their telescopes on suitably dark County properties and invite the public to take a closer look at the wonders of the night sky.
Julie Strom, a program manager with Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation’s Environmental Education division, said the County has been collaborating with TAAA for at least a decade.
“Every year, we look over the calendar together to pick dates, times, and venues,” she said. “They manage the telescopes – we take care of everything else.”
The four-inch digital telescope made a soft whirring noise as it shifted into its new position. Stooping over the viewfinder, Yehle brought a small spiral of glowing light into view: the Whirlpool Galaxy.
“That’s 37 million light-years away,” he said. “That means that light you’re seeing left the galaxy on April 5, 37 million years ago.” (Most celestial objects are so remote that astronomers measure their distance using light-years, the distance that light travels in a year.)
“Oh, wow!” exclaimed the first person to look through the telescope, surprised by the detail of the image.
Bernie Stinger’s telescope focused on another object: the Flame Nebula, a bright cloud of gas about 1,400 light-years away.
“It’s one of the closer nebulas to us,” said Stinger, who organizes stargazing events for TAAA. “Anything within about a thousand light-years of us is in our neighborhood.”
Next up was the Orion Nebula, a small splash of light in the “sword” hanging from Orion’s belt in the sky’s most famous constellation. The nebula is visible with the naked eye on a dark night, but a telescope makes it startlingly vivid.
Another astronomer aimed his telescope at a much closer object: the planet Jupiter, its four largest moons lined up in a straight row on either side of it.
The crowd was sparser than usual, probably due to the icy desert wind. A distant light now and then revealed the presence of a nearby hiker, and the volunteers occasionally used red-tinted flashlights to peer at their notes. Otherwise, there was little to distract observers from the silent beauty of the stars.
“We usually have about 60 to 100 people on a good night,” said Conor Eldridge, a program specialist with Environmental Education.
One familiar dark-sky object isn’t in evidence: the Milky Way. The center of our galaxy can often be seen spreading across the night sky like a glass of spilled milk.
“It’s not very good this time of year,” Yehle said. “That’s more of a summer thing.”
Total eclipses may be rare, but the night sky offers something to look forward to in every season.
The next County-sponsored stargazing event is scheduled for April 27 at Agua Caliente Park. Online registration is required. For other upcoming events, check out NRPR’s online calendar.