Astronomy buffs reach for stars

When you're a 14-year-old girl, it's not so hard to show boredom about, well, just about everything.

But there was Katelynn Harper, a ninth-grader at Kentlake High School — sporting a punkish look that included black jeans with bleach spots — looking at the sky through a telescope.

"That's ... Mars!" she exclaimed with unrestrained glee. It was the first time she'd ever used a telescope.

Through it, what was a bright dot to the naked eye had become a sharp image of the red planet.

Versions of this moment were replayed over and over around Puget Sound in the early evening of Feb. 20, during the total lunar eclipse.

Right about 6 p.m., clouds that had covered the region began drifting away, and it was a beautiful, clear night. It was a great night for area astronomy clubs, and they want to build on that momentum.

People that night were doing something many hadn't done for a long time: They were looking up at the sky, and marveling at what stargazers through the centuries have seen.

"People's lives are scheduled around 'American Idol' and the boob tube. Their imaginations are starved," said Dave Ingram, vice president of the Boeing Employees' Astronomical Society.

His group had set up telescopes at Van Doren's Landing Park in Kent, 10 acres of serenity away from freeways and suburban sprawl. It was there that Katelynn Harper got to see the stars.

Ingram estimated the astronomy clubs in Western Washington — the Boeing club, the Seattle Astronomical Society, the Tacoma Astronomical Society and others — have maybe a total of 1,000 members. A star party might attract a dozen or two dozen people.

In this high-tech age, what outer space looks like for many is what they see in digitally created images in movies and video games. It's ironic that the real thing gets forgotten.

Ingram, a Boeing procurement agent, devotes much of his spare time to telling people about the stars. On a regular basis, the club sets up telescopes at an Albertsons parking lot in Kent.

Even with the parking-lot lights, he said, "We can show you the moon, some bright sky objects. People have never realized they could see them."

Ingram remembered an elderly man tearing up after looking through the telescope. Half an hour later, said Ingram, the man came back.

"He had brought four generations of his family. He was hopping around like a 30-year-old," said Ingram.

On the evening of the lunar eclipse, the moon wasn't the only attraction.

Besides Mars, there was Saturn and its rings, and then there was the constellation Orion, and Sirius, the brightest star that can be seen in the northern hemisphere.

Shrina Sami, 19, a student at Bellevue Community College, was there with her dad, Dale Lewis.

She's taking an astronomy class, and is rethinking her original goal of majoring in business and marketing. The stars are calling her.

"I don't care if it's snowing; I always make it to my astronomy class," she said. "There's a whole lot of existence beyond us. This is nature. It's beautiful."

Lewis could only smile at his daughter's enthusiasm, which now includes getting a telescope she can set up on the roof.

The clubs urge those wanting to purchase a telescope to first attend a few star parties. There are telescopes, and there are telescopes.

"The common telescope you find in a department store has lots of knobs and switches," said Jon Bearscove, head of the Seattle Astronomical Society.

"And if you're talking about someone being introduced to astronomy, and suddenly they're confronted with all these knobs that they can't figure out, they get frustrated and the thing ends up in the closet."

A pair of binoculars is a good start, he said.

Then you can move up to a $300 or $400 telescope, and, if the star passion really gets you, you can move up to something like a 10-inch LX200R Advanced Ritchey-Chretien for $3,700. The latter is a "smart scope" with a computer that automatically aligns stars for you, and has hot keys to find 145,000 celestial objects.

For the 50 curious people who had stopped by the Kent park, the enthusiasm of the astronomy buffs was contagious.

Here was Keith Mackay, 48, a Boeing engineer, with his telescope, explaining his passion:

"It's about a spiritual experience. I get to see the power of the universe."

Later, on his Web site, keithmackay.com, he'd write about the evening: "The clouds began to fade and the moon started to tease us through them. It was like watching a flower bloom.

"It was so beautiful with shades of white to turquoise to red. Don't tell anyone but it put a lump in my throat when it finally revealed itself."

Here was Jason Snow, 8, with a couple of buddies, Parker Welch, 8, and his brother, Max Welch, 5. They were looking through a telescope and marveling at Saturn.

"It looks weird. It looks like you see in the pictures," Parker said.

But this was the real thing, and all they had to do was look up.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com