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Stellar experts, stargazing set for Starry Nights fest
By Mark Wheeler / Hi-Desert Star
MORONGO BASIN - Some might call it science, some might call it fun; but whatever people call watching the night sky around here, Yucca Valley has a festival for it.
Back by popular demand is the Starry Nights Festival, making its eighth year in a sequence that has earned praise from night-sky watchers far and wide. Literally a stellar event, the festival is one of those rare occasions in which there's more to see in the dark than there is when the sun is shining.
Actually, that's not exactly true. The Starry Nights Festival does have plenty of daytime activities, most notably the entertaining lectures given by some of local and international astronomy's most celebrated stars.
Leading the celebrity list is David Levy. His name first appeared in celestial lights in 1993 when he and Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker discovered the Shoemaker-Levy comet, which slammed spectacularly into Jupiter a year later in July.
Wally Pacholka is another luminary. His photographs of the night sky have been published for thousands to admire in magazines like Time, Life and National Geographic.
Other speakers include Dicken Everson, Alex McConahay, Gary Peterson and Tim Hunter.
Perhaps their names are less well-known than the other two are, but only because they are better-kept secrets in the astronomy-speaker community. Anyone having heard their presentations on subjects ranging from astronomy and myth to the Transit of Venus to astronomical cataclysms will certainly be in the festival audience this year, anxious to hear more.
Yucca Valley Community Services Supervisor June Stephens considers the festival one of the best events in town for demonstrating how the quality of life in the Hi-Desert is a product at least in part of its natural setting.
Museum Coordinator Stefanie Parmelee agrees, and praises the festival as an excellent example of how science education can be not only painless, but genuinely entertaining and fun.
Starting at 5 p.m. Friday with a reception and lecture at the Hi-Desert Nature Museum, and continuing 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the community center, the show promises to take its audience on one of the most satisfying, personally guided tours of the overhead sky imaginable.
There will also be lots of actual stargazing. From 7 to 10 p.m. both Friday and Saturday, the telescopes will be assembled at Machris Park, and all the beauties of the night sky will be brought right down to Earth, so to speak.
Thanks to a generous contribution from the Morongo Basin's Andromeda Astronomical Society, the entire event is free of charge, including Morongo Basin Transit Authority shuttle service from the museum to the park and back.
For details, call 369-7212.
Back by popular demand is the Starry Nights Festival, making its eighth year in a sequence that has earned praise from night-sky watchers far and wide. Literally a stellar event, the festival is one of those rare occasions in which there's more to see in the dark than there is when the sun is shining.
Actually, that's not exactly true. The Starry Nights Festival does have plenty of daytime activities, most notably the entertaining lectures given by some of local and international astronomy's most celebrated stars.
Leading the celebrity list is David Levy. His name first appeared in celestial lights in 1993 when he and Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker discovered the Shoemaker-Levy comet, which slammed spectacularly into Jupiter a year later in July.
Wally Pacholka is another luminary. His photographs of the night sky have been published for thousands to admire in magazines like Time, Life and National Geographic.
Other speakers include Dicken Everson, Alex McConahay, Gary Peterson and Tim Hunter.
Perhaps their names are less well-known than the other two are, but only because they are better-kept secrets in the astronomy-speaker community. Anyone having heard their presentations on subjects ranging from astronomy and myth to the Transit of Venus to astronomical cataclysms will certainly be in the festival audience this year, anxious to hear more.
Yucca Valley Community Services Supervisor June Stephens considers the festival one of the best events in town for demonstrating how the quality of life in the Hi-Desert is a product at least in part of its natural setting.
Museum Coordinator Stefanie Parmelee agrees, and praises the festival as an excellent example of how science education can be not only painless, but genuinely entertaining and fun.
Starting at 5 p.m. Friday with a reception and lecture at the Hi-Desert Nature Museum, and continuing 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the community center, the show promises to take its audience on one of the most satisfying, personally guided tours of the overhead sky imaginable.
There will also be lots of actual stargazing. From 7 to 10 p.m. both Friday and Saturday, the telescopes will be assembled at Machris Park, and all the beauties of the night sky will be brought right down to Earth, so to speak.
Thanks to a generous contribution from the Morongo Basin's Andromeda Astronomical Society, the entire event is free of charge, including Morongo Basin Transit Authority shuttle service from the museum to the park and back.
For details, call 369-7212.
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