Celestial Season

“There’s a black spot on Jupiter!” exclaimed an amateur astronomer, focusing her telescope skyward.

“It must be dust on your lens. Let me look through the Newtonian telescope,” a fellow enthusiast retorted. The 14 1/2-inch Newtonian reflector telescope was rotated toward the heavens. A moment later he shouted: “You’re right. I see the same speck on my scope. Check the charts.”

After a scramble to the celestial maps, a cheer went up among the dozen people gathered in the room as it became clear that the dot was actually the shadow of the moon Europa passing in front of Jupiter. My wife, Loretta, and I smiled at each other, bemused at the hoopla over a speck.

We were standing on the rooftop observatory at Skywatcher’s Inn, a four-room inn with a 14-foot silver dome. It’s located on a remote hilltop three miles southeast of Benson, about an hour’s drive south of Tucson.

We found out about the inn several months ago when we were planning a weekend adventure in Arizona. Loretta spotted a tiny ad for the inn in Earth magazine. Founded by a Tucson pathologist whose astronomy hobby got out of hand, Skywatcher’s Inn seemed like a good place to ground ourselves in the peace of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and study the universe above. Neither of us knew much about astronomy, but that didn’t intimidate us.

Friday morning we started the nine-hour drive from our home in Southern California, stopping in Phoenix to pick up my sister Karen, who lives there, and a niece, Karen Michelle, who was visiting from Delaware. We arrived at the inn, a ranch-style stucco structure, late in the afternoon. Our hostess, Cleo Douglass, greeted us warmly and set out a plate of chocolate chip cookies. She asked when we wanted breakfast and gave us a tour of the inn and an overview of its 65-acre grounds bordering the San Pedro River before showing us our rooms.

The rooms, with private baths, were individually decorated. Loretta and I had the Garden Room, which had flower-print draperies and bedspread and garden view. Karen and Karen Michelle settled into the Galaxy Room, with a white domed ceiling, which doubles as a planetarium for stargazing lessons on cloudy days, Douglass told us. We peeked into the Egyptian Room. For $110 a night, it contained a stunning, marble-lined Jacuzzi and a faux Egyptian armoire.

The inn was like an elegantly decorated home. Loretta and I settled into plush white sofas facing a picture window in the living room and whiled away some daylight hours watching cows and horses at the base of the scrub-covered hill. Ducks skimmed across a large tree-lined pond, with a gazebo-covered dock and a paddle boat for guests to use. We enjoyed the peace of the desert, with no tall buildings or glaring neon in sight.

“Be sure to have dinner early,” Douglass advised us, “so we can start your astronomy lesson by 6:30, before the moon rises.”

We had been at the inn only a couple of hours, but the four of us were already caught up in the thrill of discovery as we gathered with a few local astronomers and other guests in the rooftop Vega-Bray Observatory. The observatory, in a large room with a roof that slides open to reveal the sky, contains eight large telescopes ranging from a 6-inch refractor to a 14 1/2-inch reflector. At one end, in a separate chamber, is the prize: a revolving dome housing a 20-inch computerized Maksutov telescope.

Our beginner’s astronomy lesson, which we’d arranged for an extra $85 (we had the class to ourselves) when we reserved our room, was taught by Daniel Manrieque, an amateur astronomer from Argentina. The inn hires both amateur and professional astronomers from Tucson to give lessons.

Manrieque began by explaining the basics of the solar system. He showed how to recognize prominent stars and constellations, which helped when we used the various telescopes to view planets, star clusters and nebulae.

Midway through our lesson, Dr. Eduardo Vega, Skywatcher’s owner, emerged from the domed chamber and invited us to peek through the Maksutov scope.

There shone Saturn, rings and all. I stood there in awe. I had seen pictures of the sixth planet from the sun in books but now marveled at seeing the pale gold sphere directly in the heavens. Considering that Saturn is nearly 800 million miles from Earth, I was amazed at its clarity. (October through April, when the Arizona nights are at their clearest, is the best time for sky-watching.)

Vega, along with Max Bray, a telescope-maker from Phoenix, started building the observatory 10 years ago to satisfy a burgeoning astronomy habit. Soon after it was finished, Vega said, astronomy buffs came for a look, so he added an inn to the observatory.

Our lesson ended well after midnight. Settling into bed, I wondered how we’d be able to get up at 8 a.m. for breakfast. I shouldn’t have worried: The inn caters to the night-owl routine of a sky-watcher by maintaining flexible mealtimes, serving breakfast between 8 and 10 a.m. We awoke about 9 to the aroma of rich coffee, cooking eggs and muffins. Following the scent, we entered the solarium for a leisurely breakfast. Karen, Karen Michelle and five other guests were already there.

One couple had come here for a more earthly pursuit: bird-watching. It wasn’t a surprise to me, for on a morning walk along the river, I had spotted a Gambel’s quail. And a roadrunner strutted past the window at breakfast. The couple assured me the area was known for much rarer specimens.

Feasting on Southwest frittatas and hash browns, we could have sat there all morning, but we had plans to explore the historic and once-lawless town of Tombstone, about 25 miles southeast. The place was strangely quiet that morning as we walked past restored saloons and modern-day gift shops, ending up at Boot Hill graveyard, where many of the town’s colorful citizens are buried. We imagined Wyatt Earp shooting it out with the Clanton gang at the OK Corral in 1881.

Looking for some present-day action, we left for the Copper Queen Hotel, farther south in Bisbee, where we had reservations for an early dinner. The hotel was built at the turn of the century to serve the Lavender Pit copper mine. The saloon and dining room, with their rustic decor and antique furniture, made us feel as if we had stepped back a hundred years. Seated at candle-lighted tables with coral-colored tablecloths, the four of us indulged in turkey dinners with all the trimmings. The pumpkin soup with ginger was especially tasty, as were the mushroom caps with crab meat appetizers.

After dinner we had just enough time to fit in a quick tour of Kartchner Caverns and rush back to Skywatcher’s Inn for our second stargazing lesson, this time with the large 20-inch telescope. Our instructor, Ignacio Cisneros, from Venezuela and an astronomy student at a local college, was eager to start. With a nearly full moon rising in a couple of hours, he wanted us to see as much as possible before the bright moonlight diminished the visibility of the Milky Way. Using a computer to position the telescope, he showed us spectacular star clusters, galaxies, novas and planets. We saw the hazy Andromeda Galaxy--at 2.4 million light-years away, the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way. Though the powerful telescope yielded vivid, intense images, it was still hard to fathom how the fuzzy little spot of Andromeda contained hundreds of billions of stars.

Passing through Tucson on our way home Sunday morning, we could not resist one final stop: the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. A combination zoo and conservatory, it showcases the flora and fauna of the desert. But soon the museum began to get crowded, sending us fleeing for home.

We already missed the solitude of Skywatcher’s Inn.

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Budget for Four

Gas: $88.32

Skywatcher’s Inn, two nights, two rooms: 377.54

Astronomy lessons: 181.66

Dinner, Copper Queen Hotel 107.01

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: 38.80

FINAL TAB: $793.33

Skywatcher’s Inn, c/o 420 S. Essex Lane, Tucson, AZ 85711; tel. (520) 745-2390.