Sky and Telescope - June 2018 - 84

FOCAL POINT by Todd Weeks

A Feast for the Eyes

To the author, one indelible night of observing could hardly have been more delectable.

IF YOU'RE A GASTRONOME like I

exquisitely prepared as tiny disks of blue
and green on a velvet background of
deep space sprinkled with stars. I knew
even then it was going to be a special
evening.
Next came a wonderfully delightful
soup, a southern-sky broth of stars with
2 Pallas, a bright, magnitude-7.6 asteroid just below Cetus, bobbing enticingly in it. After that I enjoyed a salad
of tossed bright and dim comets in a
creamy Milky Way dressing: Comet 2P/
Encke was a large smear of diffuse light
in Cygnus whose taste complemented
the small bright nucleus of Comet
Linear (C/2002 T7) in Perseus, itself a
luscious comet even though it wouldn't
ripen to magnitude 1 until the following spring. There was also a vague hint
of Comet Linear-NEAT (C/2001 HT50)
in Aries.
My appetite whetted, I now settled
into the main course: a planetary entrée
of cosmic proportions. Waiters paraded
plate after plate of roast Saturn, with
Mars and the Moon as side dishes, to
diners across the patio. A to-die-for
gravy of good seeing and transpar-

ency covered all the dishes, bringing
out subtleties in the piquancy of each.
Saturn's atmospheric bands and Cassini
Division, with hints of the Encke Gap,
presented ethereal ﬂavor differences
between globe and rings. Meanwhile,
the sous-chef made the Moon's high
mountains and deep craters more divine
by brazing this large side dish with his
binoviewer to add that 3D touch. All
the while, the bartender kept my glass
full of rare single-malt whisky.
I ﬁnished this unforgettable meal
with a dessert of multiple stars: Sigma
Orionis, a quadruple-star system in the
same ﬁeld of view with the triple-star
system Struve 761.
Only late in the evening did I ﬁnally
leave the Quarry, having dined on
cuisine the likes of which I had not
tasted in a long time. I promised myself
I would do it again soon. May all of us
regularly have such feasts. Bon appétit!
¢ TODD WEEKS is a wildlife photographer living in the National Capital Region
of Canada. An avid amateur astronomer,
he has been an active member of the
Ottawa Valley Astronomy and Observers
Group since 2002.

NICOLLE R. FULLER, SAYO -A RT LLC

am, you know that you can recall the
particulars of a superb meal even years
later. Such can be true, too, with stargazing. One night about 15 years ago is
a case in point. Prior to that evening, I'd
been to the brink of photon starvation
from lack of observing opportunities.
But that night snatched me back with a
smorgasbord of celestial delights.
At a quaint outdoor bistro in Casselman, Ontario called the Quarry, I
sat down to a multi-course meal. With
Venus hanging low in the west, the stardappled sky overhead showcased such
wonders as the Andromeda Galaxy,
Orion Nebula, and Perseus Double
Cluster. The patio was half-full of other
hungry astronomers also sampling
the heavenly cuisine and savoring the
aroma of rural Ontario carried on the
chill autumn breeze.
I was quite familiar with my waiter,
a 10-inch Sky-Watcher Dob. But that
night "he" had a fresh look to him, as
if he'd just returned from vacation. In
fact, his mirror of a face had just had a
makeover at the skilled hands of Canadian ATM Normand Fullum.
I began with an appetizer of Neptune
and Uranus on the half shell. They were

J U N E 2 018 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

Sky and Telescope - June 2018

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