Aug., 2007---Moon, Jupiter, Asteroid Vesta
Aug., 28, 2007---Eclipse of the MOON--4AM--6:30AM
Sept. - Oct., 2007---Moon, Jupiter, Uranus, & Neptune
We usually view the MOON
4days before to 4 days after the FIRST QUARTER
moon.
Sometimes we view the Full Moon.
Call Cell # 312-659-0004
for location and
status.
Dusk until 10 or 11PM
We usually observe from:
North & Wells at Starbucks
Wells St. & Burton Place
North Ave. & Clark St. at Fountain
Tastes & Fests around Chicago
on clear, warm, >40F evenings
We always need assistants, so come out with or without
a telescope and help us!
We can teach you how to use your telescope.
Check out these links::
Email:
dennis@sidewalk-astronomy-club.com
Chicago Tribune Article--2007
Sidewalk to Heaven
Published May 17, 2007
A glimpse at the universe can be a hard sell.
"Hey, you folks want to look at the
moon?" Dennis Erickson called
out.
A pack of twentysomethings kept walking.
"No, thank you," one
young man said in his best urban dismissal
voice.
Erickson understands. A bearded, gray-haired
man wearing a pin
reading, "Ask Me About Other Worlds,"
he knows that some people
are hesitant to chat with a man with
a telescope on the street
near the intersection of North Avenue
and Wells Street.
"People, because of panhandlers, Jesus
freaks and other people on
the street, they're afraid to stop,"
he said. "Or they're so
buried in their own life that they
can't spare a few seconds to
look at the universe."
He tries to make his intentions and
the opportunity clear. "FREE.
FREE. FREE. See CRATERS of the MOON,"
read a sign hanging from the
telescope's stand.
This is Sidewalk Astronomy, a loose
confederacy of amateur
astronomers who take to even the most
urban of sidewalks to share
their love of the heavens, offered
by Erickson on behalf of the
Chicago and Latin School Sidewalk
Astronomy Clubs. And this is the
ideal time to check it out, because
Saturday is the first
International Sidewalk Astronomy Night,
with groups setting up
their telescopes around the world
People who do stop to look through
Erickson's telescope -- and
over the course of a few hours on
Wells Street south of North
Avenue, many did -- get their socks
knocked off.
Through the scope, the quarter moon
was glowing white, its surface
a curve of craters.
"Oooooh," breathed one man as he gazed.
It was just the moon, the thing you
can look up and see for
yourself. But the view through the
telescope was so radically
different as to change how you think
about things.
"Up there [with the naked eye], it
looks kind of symbolic,"
explained Larry Keller, an Old Town
resident who had just taken a
gander. "But through this, it looks
like a real thing."
"You think of it as small and perfect,
but it's not," said Loren
Sampson, whose evening walk with her
husband, Jeff, and their dog,
Jerry, had just turned into a paradigm
shift. "It's amazing. It's
just something you don't think about
every day. ... You take it
for granted."
Erickson, who teaches physics and astronomy
at the Latin School,
wants to change that. For 10 years,
he has been rolling his
telescope in a shopping cart from
his Sandburg Village apartment
to the nearby streets, most recently
the pedestrian-thick corner
of North and Wells.
On this night, he had dog, Tycho Brahe,
a beagle named after a
16th-Century astronomer, with him
as he invited people walking by
to take a look. While they did, he
offered some facts. The moon is
a quarter of a million miles away.
That brightness making even the
dark part of the moon visible was
called "earthshine;" it is the
reflection of the sun off the earth.
North and Wells is not Santa Fe. But
even here, the moon and the
brighter planets are visible to the
unassisted eye.
The sights could easily be better,
Erickson said, if street lights
were designed to aim light downward
instead of sending it into the
sky. He handed out fliers from the
International Dark-Sky
Association, which advocates reducing
light clutter so that even
urban dwellers can keep in touch with
the universe.
At this brightly lit corner, Sidewalk
Astronomy was helping people
keep in touch. A small, fluid community
grew around Erickson's
telescope as people stopped to look
and talk.
"From time immemorial people have been
looking up to the heavens.
Probably mankind's greatest accomplishment
was sending man to
another world," said neighborhood
resident Russ Bright, who
remembers watching the 1969 Apollo
11 moon landing on TV.
"I wish I could have dragged my son
away from chatting with his
friends online to see this," he sighed.
Benjamin Kallen, 8, who lives nearby,
didn't have to be dragged.
He had been studying the planets and
the moon in school, and when
he realized what was being offered,
he dragged two companions over.
"And it's free?" he cried in wonderment.
Loren Sampson was similarly struck by Erickson's generosity.
"There aren't that many people that
just want you to know what
they know," she said.
Benjamin looked through the scope,
which Erickson had moved to
focus on Saturn, its rings and one
of its moons.
"Oh! I see the moon!" he said. "Ohhhh!"
IF YOU GO
Dennis Erickson will observe International
Sidewalk Astronomy
Night from dusk to 11 p.m. on Saturday,
if skies are clear. He
will set up his telescope near the
corner of North and Wells. For
information on viewings over the next
months, visit
www.sidewalk-astronomy-club.com/chicago.
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