Star-Struck : Astronomy Club Lights Up When the Sun Goes Down

The stars turn out for all-night parties here, but there are a couple of unusual rules: no loud music and, especially, no bright lights.

On the weekends nearest each new moon, members of Orange County Astronomers gather for their monthly “star parties” at this remote Riverside County observatory site to look at real stars--and galaxies, planets, comets and nebulae. Away from the smog and city lights, the night sky above these scrub-covered hills is altogether dazzling.

Some weekends, as many as 200 amateur astronomers will gather here to gaze. With almost 600 members total, Orange County Astronomers is considered the largest such club in the country, and it owns this 20-acre site with its permanent observatory and 22-inch telescope.

The members range from first-timers to serious stargazers and published astrophotographers. Verryl V. Fosnight is one who takes his hobby seriously: not only does he have a top-of-the-line telescope (worth about $16,000), but he has a pickup truck just for hauling it around and a trailer to sleep in on his astronomy jaunts.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing compulsively,” he says with a smile. “That’s my credo, at least.”

Even as the day fades into late afternoon, the summer heat sizzles on the dusty hillsides near the sleepy town of Anza. Mt. Palomar, home of one of the world’s largest telescopes, is visible to the south; to the west is the familiar outline of Old Saddleback, reversed from the Orange County perspective.

The amateur astronomers are waiting for the sun to go down, many of them milling about their own concrete pads, which come complete with electricity (for motor drives and other gadgets) and permanent telescope mounts. A few others have pulled back the retractable roof on the main observatory and are arguing about whether adding another spotting scope will throw the big telescope out of balance.

Club member Bill Kuhn started designing the scope in 1973 and, with other members, began assembling parts in the years following. The observatory building was constructed from 1982 to ‘84, when the project was completed. The whole thing was designed and built by club labor. If built by a company, it would probably cost $125,000 to $150,000--”If you could find a place that makes them, but you can’t,” says longtime club member John Sanford.

Most commercial firms that used to build medium-size telescopes, he explains, have disappeared since universities stopped buying them in the wake of budget cuts. But Orange County Astronomers is rich with the sort of skills that are hard to find in the commercial realm: several members are noted telescope builders, and many craft their own optical and electronic accessories.

Among the club’s members is 86-year-old Bill Schaefer, a near-legendary name in amateur astronomy circles, who designed the most sought-after telescope mount for amateurs and until a few years ago was still building complete top-of-the-line scopes. He continues to tinker away in a workshop at his Placentia apartment complex, designing and building components and accessories that can’t be bought commercially.

“He’s a member of our club, and we’re real proud of him,” says Fosnight. Several of the astronomers here have scopes built by Schaefer, big instruments with 16-inch mirrors that are among the best amateur scopes available.

The most serious astronomers in the group augment the optics with an array of electronic and mechanical paraphernalia. Most have motorized clock drives that keep the scope fixed on a particular object, compensating for Earth’s rotation (a necessity for astrophotographers), while some have started using computers to help locate some of the more obscure deep-sky objects. Still others have joined the television age, using special video cameras to record their findings.

Not everyone, though, has put out the money for top-of-the-line gear. Some have yet to buy their own scopes and come to use the club’s observatory, while others are making do with more modest instruments.

Mark Stensen, a newcomer to the hobby, bought a used scope for $300 just weeks before but is already thinking of moving up. “I think I want to get a bigger scope, so I came here to look around,” the Yorba Linda resident says. “It’s like a candy store.”

“For $10,000, you can have a really good scope. But you really have to be hit by astronomy to put down $10,000,” says Richard Borrey of Villa Park, who manages to pursue his hobby of astrophotography with decidedly less expensive equipment.

Mostly, he is happy to be able to enjoy the hobby at all. In his native Belgium, astronomy was difficult to pursue because it was hard to get away from city lights that wash out the night sky. “There’s not a lot of places where you can do astronomy and still be near the jobs,” he says. Orange County, next to largely undeveloped desert and hills, is one such place.

The hardware, he argues, is not so important. “What you really enjoy most,” he says, “is being quiet, away from it all.”

Astronomy is a quiet hobby. As the sunset fades, the only sounds heard here at Anza are a few muted conversations and the quiet strains of classical and new-age melodies. One stargazer’s decision to play a rocking Bob Seger tape draws disgruntled requests from neighbors to put on some “star music.”

The only lights allowed are red-filtered flashlights. Bright lights not only cause the eyes to adjust but can ruin the patient efforts of the photographers, whose exposures can last up to an hour. Visitors who choose not to stay the night have a designated time in which to leave, from 11:30 p.m. to midnight, and even then can turn on only their parking lights.

Some things, though, are beyond the control of the club. Back at the observatory, member Wayne Johnson points out the glow of Rancho California and Temecula, boom towns 20 miles west that are inching toward the once-remote astronomy club site. And in the last couple of years, a handful of homes have been built on the border of the club property.

The homeowners have been invited to the observatory and so far, Johnson says, have been cooperative in keeping their porch lights off and otherwise keeping the excess light to a minimum.

Meanwhile, afternoon clouds that threatened to spoil the evening’s viewing have moved away, and as the thin sliver of moon sinks below the horizon, countless stars brighten the sky, with the Milky Way a brilliant band of light.

Sanford and Johnson man the observatory scope, focusing in on a spectacular succession of objects often invisible to the naked eye, and just a hazy patch in smaller scopes: globular clusters, binary stars, nebulae (giant gas clouds), galaxies of a variety of shapes.

Often, the astronomers stay up until the first light of dawn, but at 1:30 a.m. a thick cloud cover begins to darken the sky. The astronomers struggle to focus on objects just ahead of the encroaching blanket but finally give up for the night.

The monthly get-togethers at Anza are just one aspect of the club. There is a second observatory site in Silverado Canyon, for those who decide not to make the two-hour trek here. There are monthly lectures, which draw overflow crowds of 200 or more to Chapman College for subjects ranging from basic astronomy introductions to technical discourses on atmospheric chemistry.

Members of the club last year brought back public Sunday afternoon shows to Tessmann Planetarium at Rancho Santiago College, which had been discontinued since the days of Proposition 13. The club is also working with the county to build a public observatory at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley. The county will construct the building, while club members will provide the telescope and man the facility. Light pollution will hamper viewing, but its accessible location will attract people who might not have an opportunity to look through a telescope.

More outreach programs are planned. One scheme calls for the club to provide a telescope for each high school in the county and train the teachers in how to use them. The plan, said club president Bob Gill, is to help make up for the shortfall in science education, and also to turn kids on to a hobby for which Gill and others have felt a lifelong passion.

The club already runs programs for many youth and school groups. “For a good number, it’s the first chance they’ve had to look through a telescope,” Gill says. Club members give their young charges the scope controls and let them scan a patch of sky or the face of the moon.

“Just to see their faces--that’s the fun of it,” says Gill.

Like many club members, Gill got his first scope as a child for Christmas. He found the scope hard to use, though. “Even though my interest was there, I got frustrated quite early,” he said. A couple of years later, an older friend gave him a few basic lessons and he was launched on his all-consuming hobby.

“It’s one of my loves,” he says. “Any chance I get, I’m out there looking at the sky.”