Skyward
September 2019
The AAR lives
on!
About a year
ago in this column I wrote about the final Adirondack Astronomy Retreat (AAR)
that Wendee and I held in the Adirondack Mountains near Lewis, New York. We had a special program with lectures, a
banquet featuring, among other VIPs, my brother Gerry and his partner Duane,
and President John Ettling of SUNY Plattsburgh.
We even presented to Dr. Ettling the first Starlight Night Prize to celebrate
the University’s commitment to keep this wonderful place as dark as
possible. We concluded the week by
burying a time capsule.
Much as we
tried, the enthusiasm for the event was too strong just to end it. Now, under the direction of Patrice Scattolin
from Montreal and his family, AAR is continuing. With his high intelligence and brilliant
sense of humor, Patrice ran the event with an efficiency and alacrity rarely
seen. Laurie Williams, with the
assistance of daughters Clara and Sophie and son Marc, kept the indoor portion
running smoothly. And this year the
weather helped “big-time.” We had four
beautiful nights, and good portions of two others. Using the camp’s Meade 14-inch
Schmidt-Cassegrain called Aart, a 26-inch reflector dubbed Enterprise, and Carl
Jorgensen’s 8-inch reflector named Pegasus, I did almost 25 hours of visual
comet hunting. This total is possibly a record for this site. When the sky is at its best here, I can
glimpse Messier 33 with the naked eye and I did that almost every night. The International Space Station made a nice
pass, and we saw several bright meteors heralding the onset of the Perseid
meteor shower.
The purpose of
this particular retreat was and still is to recharge our astronomical
batteries, and to remind us why we became amateur astronomers in the first
place. While last year we had plenty
of down time to enjoy movies and singalongs, this year the night sky occupied
pretty much all our time. It was truly
spectacular.
While the site
may be superb now, we chose it for our star party because of the memories that
flood back every time I revisit it. It
provided my first serious dark sky experience decades ago, during the summers
of 1964, 1965, and 1966. I loved it so
much back then that I asked Dad if I could attend SUNY Plattsburgh the rest of
the year. In one of the few mistakes Dad
ever made, he resisted, preferring that I attend Montreal’s McGill University
instead. I flunked out of McGill twice. But I have never forgotten the pristine
beauty of SUNY Plattsburgh’s Twin Valleys campsite, with its unparalled views
of the “forever wild” Adirondack mountains.
May this priceless spot continue to remind future generations of how
beautiful the mountains are, and how beautiful the night sky remains far above
their lofty peaks.
