Record Crowds View Nature’s Celestial Show

This evening marks the last opportunity for stargazers to view Jupiter in the wake of its historical clash with Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, closing a record-setting week for visitors at the county’s only observatory in Moorpark.

Hal Jandorf, an astronomy instructor at Moorpark College that is host to the Charles Temple Observatory, said the tiny facility drew its largest one-week turnout ever with people from throughout the county.

“We’ve been living here,” he quipped.

Don White, 49, of Somis, spent most of his week at Moorpark leaning over to fiddle with his $7,600, seven-inch Starfire refractor telescope, so others could look through the powerful lens.

“I don’t get a chance to look through my telescope very much anymore,” he said. Instead, with the crowds of people surrounding him hoping for a turn peering through his six-foot-long scope, he said he gets near it “only to make adjustments.”

Jandorf estimates that about 300 county residents showed up at an instructional seminar on the history-making event Sunday evening, and that about a 100 people had come to the observatory each evening since.

Ventura County Astronomical Society members and other fans of the night sky set up their telescopes on a hillside concrete pad just outside the observatory.

Others caught a glimpse of Jupiter’s black scars through a camera hooked up to a Celestron 14-inch telescope that beamed pictures onto a television screen for everyone to see.

On Wednesday, Jandorf’s astronomy Lab class met and several students stayed afterward for what was expected to be their first look at an actual impact fireball.

“We picked a great time to take the class, because this is once in 65 million years that this would happen,” said sophomore Shannon Lovato, 18, of Simi Valley.

But a dense cloud cover prevented dozens gathered around from seeing much of anything that night.

However, Jim Sumstine, 50, of Ventura, who serves as historian for the Astronomical Society, had already seen the spectacle earlier in the week.

“I think I could feel my heart beating,” he said of seeing vast black impact spots on Jupiter. “It was a highly emotional thing for me. I was almost to the point of tears.

“We are seeing real science in real time,” he said.

For more information, call the Astronomical Society’s Star Line at 529-7813.