Many small towns in the Midwest have a small restaurant that
serves
as
something of a community center. Usually, there's a big table, seating
a
dozen or more, and at breakfast times, it's the scene of people coming
and
going, gossiping about whatever happens to interest them -- and in
a small
town, that can take a wide range. In February, snowmobiling and
ice
fishing are topics, especially among those that are into the sports,
but
the topics can easily be a daughter's new boyfriend, or negotiations
to
build a new garage.
The breakfast table at what, in 1989, was called the Carleton
Cafe in
Hudson was the scene of a minor event that would eventually add to
the
uniqueness of Lake Hudson. It wasn't an altogether inappropriate spot
--
the Cafe was named for Will Carleton, Hudson's epitome of the local
boy
made good; the lake was nearly named after him, as well, back in the
early
days, before American Central Corporation, for whatever reason they
had,
named it Lake Hudson instead.
What really made the connection was that on this one winter
Saturday
morning, several of the seats around the breakfast table were filled
with
local amateur astronomers, grousing about the marginal observing site
they'd been at the night before.
Astronomers of any form like things dark, the darker the
better. Extraneous
light, of any form is the enemy to be avoided at all costs, and with
the
widespread introduction of the 175-watt mercury vapor light in what
seems
like every yard over the past couple of decades, finding dark
spots to
study the night sky has become increasingly a more difficult task.
Finally, one of the astronomers commented, "I don't know what
we're
heading
all over the country for. After all, Lake Hudson has to have some of
the
darkest skies around here." The casual remark around the table led
to an
expedition that evening to Lake Hudson's boat launch that evening for
four
of the amateurs, where we discovered that the 2560 acres of Lake Hudson
was
not only a convenient place to take telescopes, but a good one. From
the
boat launch, there was no ground lighting in sight, although there
was glow
in the skies from Hudson to the west, and from Adrian, to the east.
After a
great deal of looking, we'd found as good a site for astronomical
observing
as exists in southern Michigan -- and right in their own back yard.
March brings a special time for astronomy and another
rite of
spring at
Lake Hudson, at least if the weather will cooperate.
Two hundred years and more ago, there was a Frenchman by the
name of
Charles Messier. He was a comet hunter, and he spent many nights over
many
years hunting for the faint fuzzy spots in the sky that would mean
that he
had found a new comet. He didn't like interruptions to his comet
hunting,
or things that would take him away from it; he was angry that the death
of
his wife took him away from his comet hunting.
Messier did his comet hunting with what we, today, would
consider to
be a
pretty poor telescope. In his endless sweeps across the night sky,
he kept
finding faint fuzzy areas that he thought might be new comets -- but
comets
move in the sky from night to night, and these didn't. A man
who would get
upset at the death of his wife keeping him from hunting comets would
also
get upset at continuing to find these faint fuzzy areas, thinking they
were
comets, and they turned out not to be. So, after a while, Messier began
to
keep a list of these faint, fuzzy areas that looked like comets, but
which
weren't. Eventually, the list reached 110 objects.
No one would remember Charles Messier today, except the odd
historian
of
astronomy, were it not for his list of things that weren't comets --
because that list is pretty much the list of the best 110 objects
outside
the solar system to turn a small, amateur-sized telescope at. These
objects
turned out to be star clusters, clouds of interstellar gas, and
galaxies
galore, some awesome in their beauty. Messier missed a few, and a
few got
onto his list that make modern astronomers wonder why he bothered,
but if
you ask an amateur astronomer under a dark sky what he's looking at,
the
odds are they'll say, "M-something or other".
The one time each year that all 110 of the M-objects can be
seen on
the
same night is in mid to late March, and even in the best circumstances,
a
few are chancy at best. In 1990, we instituted an annual "Messier
Night"
at
Lake Hudson, to attempt to see all 110 objects, but we've never caught
a
March evening when it's clear all night.
We've had a few that started out pretty good. There are a few
objects
that
you have to somehow pick out of the evening twilight, but given a clear
evening and a little knowledge of where to look, it isn't an impossible
task. Once it gets good and dark, production is usually pretty
steady
until about midnight -- but then, there's a long break as we wait for
summer stuff to fill the sky, and on the few nights we've had where
we've
had pretty good starts, it has clouded up about this point and shut
us down
for the evening.
As far as I know, I still hold the Messier Night record at Lake
Hudson,
after observing 67 in two different years, but a pair of students from
Eastern Michigan University quietly came out in the middle of the week
one
night a few years ago, and ran the list to 107, the Lake Hudson record,
so
I have little to crow about. But, I keep trying.
The best nights for stargazing at Lake Hudson come in the
middle of
spring,
just about the time that the trees are leafing out, before the
mosquitoes
have gained their full voracity.
It was one spring morning, a few days after a Messier night,
that Jim
and I
were once again sitting in the Carleton Cafe, along with another couple
local amateurs. It was while the beach was under construction across
Covill
Lagoon from our picnic area observing site, and rumor had it that the
DNR
planned to put up night lighting at the beach parking lot. If that
happened, this great dark site would be lost to us, and we were
saddened
by
the thought. "We ought to talk to the DNR about that," I said. "It
would be
great if we could turn this into a protected dark sky site."
Jim, who was a lawyer, replied, "If they do something like that
administratively, then they can undo it administratively, just as
easily.
We ought to talk to the legislature."
"It'd never happen," I snorted.
"Want to bet?" Jim smiled.
Thus it was, a couple months later, that I sat in the dark at
the controls
of the Adrian College Planetarium as Jim made his pitch to our local
state
representative, a jewel of a man by the name of Tim Walberg. In an
era
where the words "parties" and "politicians" can be dirty words, over
sixteen years Tim proved that you can be honest and honorable,
responsive
to the people regardless of political views. I must admit, he was a
little
skeptical about our idea until his eyes were dark adapted, and the
little
pinpoints of light became visible on the ceiling. We pointed out some
of
the things that could be seen at night, then I ran up the rim lighting
of
the planetarium, showing the effects of ground lighting on observing
the sky.
Two years later, after several trips to the state capitol for
hearings
and
conferences, Lake Hudson became the first "Dark Sky Preserve" in the
country to be named by a state, where permanent ground lighting was
banned
for a trial ten-year period.
Not long after the Michigan governor had signed the bill into
law as
Jim,
my daughter, and I watched, the Perseid meteor shower on August 12
was
predicted to be the best in over a century, with high rates of bright
meteors. There were a lot of stories in the media about the shower,
and the
local astronomy club sent out a news release to the local media
recommending that the viewer seek out dark skies, and noting that Lake
Hudson had recently been named a dark sky preserve. We Lake Hudson
regulars
thought that a few people might show up. We were in for a surprise.
Even before dark, the parking lot at the picnic grounds was so
jammed
with
cars that there was no way in or out. There were hundreds of people
laying
out in lawn chairs, or on blankets, just watching the sky! Some
latecomers
told me later that there were people lined up along the entrance road,
and
packing the boat launch, the beach -- which had just been opened --
and the
campground.
I just wish we could have offered the people that came out to
see the
Perseid meteor shower a better show, even though the one we had was
pretty
good. The weather could have cooperated a little more; it was
hazy, hot,
humid, and the mosquitoes were about as bad as I have seen them at
Lake
Hudson. Fog rolled in early, limiting the amount of sky that we could
see
-- but that first couple of hours was worth the effort.
For as soon as it was dark enough to see them, we started
getting a
steady
stream of meteors -- not a lot, but between big and small ones, at
a rate
perhaps twice what we would normally expect for the Perseids. They
were a
lot brighter than the normal Perseids. That first hour, I saw more
meteors
that could be classified "fireballs" than I'd ever seen in a year.
And it wasn't the meteors that impressed me as much as it was
the people.
As each bright fireball went over, there were a lot of "ooo"s and
"aaaah"s
-- and, of course, a few voices saying "Darn, I missed it".
That was really what Representative Walberg and Jim and I had
in mind
with
our work on the dark sky preserve -- not the idea of preserving a
convenient place to take telescopes, but the idea of providing a place
where people can go to enjoy the beauty of a dark night sky. Those
delightful sounds coming from the crowd laid back in their lawn chairs,
staring at the night sky, was the real reward for all those trips and
phone
calls to Lansing.
The sun sets late following the long summer days of July, and
the twilight
lingers long. Not far past its northernmost summer excursion, the sun
lays
not far below the northern horizion for an unbelieveable time. The
thin
edge of twilight lays to far to the north late in the evening, peeking
around the corner of the world to put a dim glow of faint color on
the
blackening sky.
The long, quiet evenings are a magnificent time to sit and
watch the
world
turn from day to night and see fireflies dancing in the air, to watch
the
fishermen continue to troll up and down the waters as dusk is falling,
to
see bats racing madly through the air getting their fill of the many
mosquitos, and just to come a little closer attuned to the pace of
nature.
But the long, lingering July evenings are a little frustrating for
astronomy, mostly because the hour is so late when you get started,
and
dawn twilight and the day aren't far away at any time.
The most spectacular nights of observing the night sky at Lake
Hudson
came
in the early 1990s, when the solar cycle was near its peak, and the
aurora
borealis danced in the evening sky to the north. On nights that seemed
likely to produce an aurora, we would take telescopes, but only to
kill
time until the northern lights perked up, if they did. When they did,
a
telescope was not the appropriate observing tool; more preferable was
a
good, comfortable lawn chair, and an old blanket to keep off the dew.
Jim,
my regular observing companion in those days, and I spent many a night
there in the parking lot of the picnic area, watching the dancing glow
of
the aurora.
One evening, my daughter, then perhaps about nine or ten, asked
if she
could go with us to watch the aurora. I expected that she'd soon get
bored
and want to do something else, but the lights perked up early, and
she sat
there enthralled. Adults don't see color well in the darkness, so an
aurora
has to be pretty bright to be colorful. This particular night, all
Jim and
I were seeing was a dull, flickering glow, but my daughter got a show,
for
young eyes see dim colors better than older ones. "Look at the
pinks! Look
at the greens!" she exulted, while Jim and I just could look at each
other
in the dark, blind to something we were past seeing.
Perhaps the most glorious night I ever had stargazing at Lake
Hudson
came
one fall night in the early '90s. Most of the gang was somewhere else
far
away that evening, and only Dave and I had been unwilling to make the
trip.
The sky that evening was extraordinarily clear and calm and dark, a
night
like we'd never seen before. Gazing around the sky with naked eye,
we
started hunting Messier objects that we'd only seen with telescopes
before,
and eventually came up with more than thirty, just with the naked eye,
though some were just hints of what they might be in a telescope. That
night, Dave even gave up his double star passion to glory in the
brightness
of telescopic objects that usually we only saw faintly, while the Milky
Way
blazed overhead so brightly that it almost cast a shadow on the
pavement
of
the parking lot beneath our feet. Afterward, when we'd heard that the
rest
of the gang had been clouded out as a reward for their long trek, Dave
and
I felt as if we'd stolen a jewel from them.
The late fall often brought a special opportunity for
stargazing at
Lake
Hudson. Just as the late summer and fall constellations come up in
the
spring if you wait long enough, in the early morning the winter and
early
spring constellations are visible. Since winters are cold, and clear
nights
the coldest, and the early spring often cloudy, a few of us would take
advantage of the situation and meet at Lake Hudson for what we called
the
"Dawn Patrol." There were never more than a handful of us there, real
diehards all, and some weekday mornings during a period when I was
trying
to observe some rarely-seen objects in winter constellations deep in
the
southern sky, I'd be out there at the picnic area by myself. It can
be
extraordinarily quiet at these hours; even the traffic noise from the
highway not far away is at a minimum. The sky can be at its stillest
in
these predawn hours, with the heating of the day far behind, and the
view
of stars can be steady, indeed. It seems truly lonely and empty out
there
at that hour, just you and the stars, with little to distract you.
I
vividly remember one morning when I was trying to locate a faint open
star
cluster far below Orion when I was startled by a lone goose that flew
low
over head, wondering what was going on out there, and with a single
honk
letting me know of his presence in the sky overhead; there was more
there,
it seemed, than just stars.
I'm no longer as involved with astronomy as I once was. An
unexpected
health problem caused my night vision to degrade to some degree not
long
after that night, and I've not been able to make out clear, pinpoint
star
images since, but slightly out of focus blobs, despite several new
pairs of
glasses to try to correct the problem. That took a lot of the fun out
of
the hobby, and I turned to other things thereafter. But, I still try
to
make it out to Lake Hudson for stargazes a few evenings a year, to
watch
the sun set and the night come on, to sip coffee with friends as the
shadows grow long and the light fades, to enjoy as best I can the clear
beauty of a night sky.