Oakland Unified teachers assembling Galileoscopes at ChabotWhat was it like for Galileo, the first time he put an eye to his telescope to see things in the heavens as never before seen? As anyone who has seen a planet or a star cluster or a nebula—or the Moon—through even a small telescope knows, the sight can be quite breathtaking. For Galileo, it must have been a universe-changing experience….

Through a generous donation by a concerned citizen (concerned that kids today aren't seeing enough of the sky), Chabot just completed a pair of workshops for Oakland teachers that places in their capable hands and in their classrooms "Galileoscopes"—special telescopes designed and manufactured for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. The Galileoscope is a low cost, simple, but good-quality telescope designed to simulate the power and field of view of Galileo's original telescope, which opened up the universe in such a profound way.

In September and October, a total of 23 Oakland teachers received training, activities, and one Galileoscope each (plus tripod), enabling them to share the experience with their students and, hopefully, spark their imagination and curiosity about the world around us in a way that nothing but astronomy does.

A look through a telescope—any telescope, big or small—does put a spark in the eye and the imagination. At least, that was my experience. Growing up in Oakland back in the 60's, I didn't have access to any small telescopes, but Chabot Observatory was only a couple miles away, and my family often went up on a weekend night for a classroom demo, a planetarium show, and thoroughly enjoyable viewing through the two antique telescopes, Leah and Rachel. Something about the actual light from Saturn or Jupiter or a distant galaxy tickling the receptors in your retina places you out there—or puts those objects directly into your brain.

The Oakland teachers now armed with their Galileoscopes will use these simple but effective tools to show their students the difference between seeing Saturn as a spot of light and Saturn as a disk with "ears" (the appearance of its rings through a Galileoscope), or the difference between Jupiter as a brighter spot of light and Jupiter as a world with a giant storm in its clouds and four smaller "worlds" (moons) in orbit around it, or the difference between the Moon as a disk with light and dark areas that make interesting shapes in our imaginations and the Moon with mountain ranges, vast plains, thousands upon thousands of craters, and shadows stretching across the landscape.

By the way, Galileoscopes can still be ordered, through the Galileoscope website, for a short time still, in case you're interested in getting your toe into the door of a much bigger universe….

Sketch drawing of the proposed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (1913) from Overland Monthly, April 1913.

The Bay Bridge will be closed from September 3rd at 8:00 p.m. until the 8th at 5:00 a.m. During these 105 hours, Caltrans will perform an "essential and unprecedented construction feat."

It turns out there was a lot I didn't know about the Bay Bridge. Its official name, for example is not the Bay Bridge. It's "The James 'Sunny Jim' Rolph Bridge," after the California Governor who died in 1934, two years before the bridge opened (The Golden Gate Bridge opened 6 months later). Around 280,000 vehicles traverse the bridge every day—nearly $7 in bridge tolls per second; The Yerba Buena Tunnel that connects the eastern and western segments is the world's largest diameter bore tunnel; Much of the eastern span is supported by old growth Douglas Firs, driven into firm mud.

As construction grows increasingly noticeable, the new eastern section rising out of the bay, more people are wondering: How will it attach? What happens to the old bridge? What's with the retrofit of the western suspension? And what is this unprecedented feat of construction happening over Labor Day weekend?

The construction website, baybridge360, just received a Webby award in the Government category, and is worth a visit. Videos and slide shows are overlaid on a satellite image of the bay and provide answers to these and other engineering questions. There's a bit of Troy McClure style narration, epic synthesizer for the construction scenes, and techno pop for the fast-forward time lapse photography. At one point, the “Governator” dons a pair of terminator sunglasses for a ceremonial blowtorching.

The new site may be sleek, but some of the most interesting information is buried in the old stalwart: baybridgeinfo.org. The western span's retrofitting, completed in 2004, added some 17 million pounds of structural steel, and included new rollers between the roadway and the bridge supports. The new eastern segment (slated for rebuilding since a section collapsed in the 1989 Loma-Prieta earthquake) will include the world's longest Self-Anchored Suspension (SAS) bridge, connected to a pier-supported "Skyway" (elevated roadway over a mile of mudflats), sloping down to the "Oakland Touchdown."

The 2,047-foot asymmetric SAS will be supported by a single steel tower, embedded in rock, rising 525 feet above sea level. While most suspension bridges use a pair of cables, the new SAS employs a single cable, anchored on the east side, wrapped over and around the tower, and down to the west. The Skyway is supported by a set of steel pipes, driven 300 feet into deep bay mud by a massive hydraulic hammer.

Amidst the construction clamor, considerable attention is afforded to local wildlife. Dense columns of air bubbles helped dissipate shockwaves from the hammering to ease construction-related stress on local fish. For the birds, platforms under the new east span provide cormorant nesting habitat, and the crew is building a 500 square-foot island for the pleasure of the snowy egret and ruddy turnstone. And at the Oakland touchdown, a turbidity-controlling curtain was installed to protect eelgrass, which in turn serves as a filter, improving water quality.

So consider all this next time you lament the $4 bridge toll. The original 1936 toll, collected in both directions, works out to over $20 in 2009 dollars. The bridge is scheduled for completion in late 2013.

Ain't love grand? Once courtship and mating are over, the female hornbill finds a tree hollow and seals herself in with dung, fruit and pellets of mud.

I love our hornbills. Situated in the Rainforest section of the Zoo, between our gibbons and our chimps, they are often overlooked, yet I find them fascinating.

The female has the bright blue gular pouch (an expandable throat sac, used for short-term storage of food) and the male has the pale yellow version.  Like all hornbills, they have a distinctively large and down-turned beak.  These Malayan Wreathed Hornbills are one of the 54 species found in Asia and Africa.

Their dramatic nesting ritual is what makes them so interesting. Once courtship and mating are over, the female finds a tree hollow and seals herself in with dung, fruit and pellets of mud. The male gathers the pellets from the forest floor and swallows them, later regurgitating small saliva-cased building materials. He then gives them to the female who stays inside the nest leaving a slit for a window big enough to receive food and materials. For the next 6-8 weeks the male feeds the female through this opening. She does not emerge until she has molted and re-grown fresh feathers and her young has grown and become feathered, as well. Then, both mother and child knock down the wall and appear on the scene, happy and healthy. Last year the public was enthralled, as our hornbills participated in this ritual.

The zoo is concerned with the status of hornbills in the wild, and since 2004, the Oakland Zoo Conservation Fund has worked with a fantastic program coordinated by the Hornbill Research Foundation. Besides collecting data, the foundation has launched a Hornbill Nest Adoption Program, which works to foster conservation of these beautiful birds. Illegal logging and the poaching of young birds for the pet trade are the key issues facing hornbills. The Nest Adoption Program employs local people to look after the hornbills in their nests and collect scientific data about them.

When you adopt a nest, you get a wonderful pamphlet of information about the hornbill, a map of the location of your particular nest, a profile of your guard and, my favorite, a break down of what food the male brought to the female (2 figs, .3 millipedes, 1 lizard).

This summer, eighteen Oakland Zoo teens and staff will embark on a journey to visit Thailand and will spend a day at Khao Yai National Park with the intention hope to spot birds, nests and learn first hand about the project.  They will also visit with the Young Bird Conservation Club, which creates Hornbill art to sell to zoos for their Conservation Projects. To prepare for their trip, these inspired have been attending workshops and raising funds to adopt two nests of their own.

Back at the zoo, the summer will be filled with more hornbill conservation action as ZooCamp 2009 has adopted the species as their official summer animal. With a hornbill on the front of their t-shirt and the Hornbill Research Foundation logo on the back, all campers will be learning about this animal and the project that supports them. Each camper has also contributed a bit of their camp fee into the program and will surely leave camp with the contribution of knowledge and compassion for these incredible birds.

Come by and visit our hornbills, join us this summer at ZooCamp ,or adopt a nest yourself (http://www.zoo.org/conservation/hornbill.html).

Terrestrial snow at Chabot on December 16, 2008
Photo by Craig CoryellDriving to work today, I was amused to notice that the raindrops falling on my windshield were a bit grainy–and getting more so the higher up the hill I drove. I starting to think, is it starting to sleet? By the time I reached Chabot–at 1500 feet elevation–the precipitation had turned to bona fide snow!

This is quite unusual for the Oakland Hills, of course. In the ten years I've worked here, this is the second, maybe third, dusting I've witnessed. I recall the great freeze of '74, when it actually snowed in Oakland close to sea level—that's the year all the eucalyptus in the hills froze and died.

My mind wandered—pretty far out in space (an occupational hazard at Chabot). I started thinking about all the recent news and discoveries from around the Solar System, my thoughts guided by the fat white flakes drifting down all around the observatory domes.

Last September, NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander detected snow falling high in the atmosphere–about 4 kilometers high. This Martian snow, however, quickly evaporated in Mars' thin, dry air, never reaching the ground. Phoenix used a laser probe to make the detection–so we don't actually have picture to look at!

Snows of the Solar System may also fall out of the plumes of "cryovolcanoes"–the frigid outer Solar System's version of volcanism (may it live long and prosper). On moons such as Saturn's Enceladus and Neptune's Triton, plumes of material have been detected spouting from fissures and cracks–probably fueled by heat generated by tidal forces from their parent planets.

On Enceladus, the geyser plumes contain water vapor and ice crystals, and are believed to come from subsurface lakes of "warm" water (32 degrees Fahrenheit–in other words, ice water… but that's a veritable hot spring, or magma chamber, on a cold moon like Enceladus!).

The ice crystals in the geysers' plumes mostly fall back to Enceladus–maybe in a diffuse fall of "snow" across the globe? I'm waiting for those pictures…

Saturn's large moon Titan is speculated to possibly have a form of cryvolcanism, though no direct detection has yet been made. Still, any water vapor that might erupt from a Titanian cryovolcano might be expected to fall in a form of snow….

Triton, much farther from the Sun than Saturn, is even colder than Enceladus. In fact, it's been called the coldest measured surface in the Solar System, at -391 degrees Fahrenheit. Here, nitrogen freezes solid. Triton cryovolcanoes, or geysers, may be partially solar-heated, but tidal heating within Triton is probably dominant. Triton's geysers spout nitrogen gas and dark material, which falls across the landscape in dark streaks and lighter deposits of frozen nitrogen–a form of extreme cryo-snow, to my imagination!

Now, are you as cold as I am just thinking about it? Time for a cup of cocoa…

School groups tour the Oakland Schools Science Fair
projects at Chabot. Ben Burress, Chabot Space & Science CenterIt's the time of year again that I get a chance to peruse what our scientific-minded youth are thinking on questions of the physical world and universe around us: Oakland Unified School District Science Faire!

The science projects of students from a range of schools in Oakland are on display at Chabot Space & Science Center for a couple of days-a long-time tradition I know, because when I was in elementary school (Glenview Elementary in Oakland) I participated in the Science Faire every year and wound up with my First Grade project (Which Straw Works Best-longer or shorter?) on display at Chabot Observatory on Mountain Blvd.

So I went out into our halls to browse the rows of free-standing cardboard displays (all pre-fabbed display boards; in my day we'd make our own from boxes, staples, and glue!) to see what today's young minds are thinking about science. In particular, I was looking for any that dealt with astronomy.

As usual, I saw a range of science topics, presentations styles, decoration, and grade levels. I saw the cadre of "standard" science projects that get done every year (the tabletop volcano, the floating egg, the electric potato, and the like).

I also saw some that I'd not seen before. There was one where the question asked was who has more germs, boys or girls? The experimenter took swab samples from behind the ears and from the hands of the students in her fourth grade class and grew germ cultures, which were all displayed before the presentation board in little plastic Petri dishes. What was the result? Do you want to know? Well, by this experiment at least, the girls won over the boys in having more germs from both sample sites….

But what of the astronomy? In all of the couple hundred project displays, only three of them were astronomy projects. This doesn't surprise me too much, since astronomy is for the most part an observational, not experimental, science and doesn't lend itself to the kinds of things kids like to get their hands into. And of my own elementary school science faire projects, not one of them dealt with astronomy, so I really can't complain!

What were they? One dealt with observations of Moon phases, asking the question is there a pattern to the way in which the Moon's shape changes from day to day. One asked why do the planets of the Solar System take different periods of time to orbit the Sun, and why do they have different temperatures. Finally, one asked the ultimate Inconvenient Truth sort of question: What would happen to Earth if the Sun suddenly turned off? (That would be inconvenient!) The answer to that one was, not long, since just about everything we do requires energy derived ultimately from the Sun.

The results of my own observation project, walking down the halls of Chabot and seeing what's up in the minds of our youth, was a happy success: the curiosity and scientific enthusiasm of our budding scientists appears to be alive and well.

Why do Moon Bears need you to knit?

Once upon a time in the far away land of Hong Kong, a woman named Jill Robinson discovered that beautiful moon bears where being held captive in tiny cages in China and farmed (through their bellies) as a living source for bear bile, which is used in traditional medicines. She decided to do something heroic about the issue and founded the Animals Asia Foundation. Animals Asia became a thriving organization, dedicated to ending cruelty and restoring respect for all animals in Asia.

For many moon bears, their stories have a happy ending. Jill and the AAF crew have rescued 500 bears, releasing them into their idyllic sanctuary in Chengdu China. Newly rescued moon bears tentatively step on fresh grass, slowly learn to climb, socialize, scamper through bamboo, wrestle and eat honey, finally becoming a real bear.

Of course, the bears can't go from cages to sanctuary directly; they must endure urgent veterinary care and often surgery to remove the bile equipment from their bodies. Bears must be anaesthetized to receive this care and it is important that they stay warm and comfortable during the process. Just as with humans, the bears' extremities are the first things to get cold and that is where knitters on the West Coast of the United States, worlds away, come in. They must knit giant bear mittens!

The Oakland Zoo is hoping to have some mittens knitted in order to hand them directly to Jill Robinson on May 21, when she speaks at the Oakland Zoo. We will have a knitting party at the zoo on Friday, May 9, from 1pm-3pm. However, mittens can be turned in to the Oakland Zoo at anytime and mailed to China in the hopes that the thousands of moon bears still in captivity will need them soon.

The mitten pattern allows for several weights of yarn and includes instructions for knitting in the round with one circular, two circulars, double-pointed needles, or knitting flat. Finished mittens are about 7″ wide (14″ circumference) with a 12″ foot and 6″ cuff. The pattern is intended to be beginner level, but if you have any questions about the techniques mentioned, you might find the website knittinghelp.com helpful.

Click here for the pattern and try it yourself:

bearbooties.pdf

The Oakland Zoo will be working with Article Pract in Oakland on more mittens for bears.

Find out more about Moon Bears and their plight, and meet Jill Robinson on Wednesday, May 21 at 6:30 for the lecture entitle, "From Prison to Paradise: Rescuing the Endangered Asian Moon Bear. Bring the family to Bear Day at the Oakland Zoo on Saturday, May 17.

Some of this information is thanks to Twisted, the Knit Shop in Oregon who is helping the Oregon zoo knit mittens.


Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

It's approaching that time of year again: Spring Equinox. The blaze in my home's interior hallway has been signaling this for the last week.

The shadow of Chabot's "solar clock" at noon
on the equinox produces a pattern of solid green
straddling the gnomonI noticed late in the afternoon a couple days ago that the windowless hallway where we hang all of our family photos was afire in a shaft of bright sunlight, entering a window in the adjacent bedroom. Only around Equinox (Spring or Fall), when the Sun sets about directly west, does this happen in my house. The rest of the year the Sun sets too far north or south for this window-and-hallway alignment to take place. It's a striking event because for only a few days of the year my normally dark hallway explodes with radiance.

Ancient cultures all around the world made use of the changing rise and set position of the Sun to track the seasons, and either observed special alignments of sunlight and shadow with geographical features, or built structures that made the special alignments. Stonehenge is one famous example, but there are plenty of other seasonal observatories in just about every part of the world.

Unlike the more distant stars in the sky, which always rise and set at the same points on the horizon, the Sun (a star too, of course) wanders northward and southward in the sky throughout the year, and so its rise and set points migrate. On the Equinoxes the Sun rises directly at the east point on the horizon and sets directly at the west point-but at Summer Solstice in the Bay Area it rises a full 30 degrees to the north, and at Winter Solstice 30 degrees to the south.

The reason for the Sun's annual wandering comes from the tilt of Earth's rotational axis with its orbit around the Sun. At our (Northern Hemisphere) Summer Solstice, our hemisphere is tipped toward the Sun and the Sun appears at its most northerly point in the sky; we receive more hours of sunlight and more direct rays from the Sun-so it's warmer. Winter Solstice is opposite, with our hemisphere tipped away and the Sun and the Sun farthest to the south, making for shorter hours of daylight and less direct solar rays–and so it's colder.

Equinox is a middle point between solstices: the Sun is poised between the northern and southern extreme points of the solstices-positioned directly over Earth's equator-and the hours of daylight and night are about equal.

Does your home or place of work function as a solar seasonal calendar, as mine does? Is there a special time of year when you notice a striking pattern of light and shadow, a special alignment of walls, windows, doors, or other features? From the location of Chabot Space & Science Center, at equinox the Sun sets directly on the Golden Gate Bridge… .

If you have noticed something like this, then you've experienced what many ancient peoples noticed about the seasonal changing of the Sun. Their observations led them to understanding, or at least making use of, the cycle of the Earth revolving about the Sun to establish the earliest calendar systems.

Take a look and see what you notice, especially around Equinox (March 19, Pacific Time-March 20 GMT).

Benjamin Burress is a staff astronomer at The Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.

The original Oakland Observatory in the 1880’s,
at Lafayette Square in Oakland. Credit: Chabot Space
& Science Center archives.This year marks an anniversary for the astronomical heritage of Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area: Chabot Observatory turns 125!

Originally established as the Oakland Observatory in 1883, the facility was a unique creature from the very beginning. Conceived by then Oakland Public Schools Superintendent Jewett Gilson, who was inspired by a school observatory he saw in Philadelphia, the observatory was created for use by Oakland schools and the general public at large.

Gilson looked for, and eventually found, a donor to fund the observatory project: Anthony Chabot, a wealthy entrepreneur and philanthropist who made his fortune building municipal water systems in the Bay Area– including Lake Temescal and Lake Chabot. Anthony Chabot stipulated as part of his original $3,000 gift that the telescope shall forever be available for public observation at not cost– a tradition that continues today.

Chabot didn't want the observatory to be named for him, so in its earliest years it was called the Oakland Observatory. The public, as the story goes, insisted on calling it Chabot Observatory in gratitude for the gift– and eventually the name was made official.

The original location for the observatory and its 8-inch Alvan Clarke and Sons telescope ("Leah") was close to downtown Oakland in Lafayette Square– which today remains a square block of parkland, at 10th and 11th Streets and Martin Luther King Junior Way and Jefferson Street. In those days, 10 or so visitors on any given night would climb the tower-like structure to the telescope dome and peer at the heavens through the high quality instrument. Reservations had to be made in advance– sometimes as long as a month or two.

As Oakland grew, and particularly as it converted its street lighting from gas-powered lamps to electric lights, the necessity of moving the observatory to a darker spot grew. The observatory’s first director, Charles Burckhalter (who is said to have been the first person in Oakland with an astronomical telescope, set up in a backyard observatory at his home on Chester Street), arranged for the relocation. A number of different sites were considered– including a spot near Redwood Peak, the current location of the observatory– but a small hill next to the Mills College campus was finally adopted.

In 1915, Chabot Observatory opened at its new site, along with a new 20-inch Warner and Swasey telescope ("Rachel"), and continued to wow the public with the astronomical vistas it conveyed. In 1923 the directorship passed to Earle Linsley, a Mills College professor, who expanded the reach of the observatory to the public through outreach to schools and the establishment of an amateur astronomy group (today the Eastbay Astronomical Society).

Having visited this Chabot Observatory as a child in the 1960s, I now appreciate how long and distinguished a career those two telescopes spanned. At the time, I had no idea that Leah, even in 1968, was 85 years old-older than my grandparents! Then the observatory was run by the beloved Kingsley Wightman — "Mr. Science" to a generation or two.

It took the moving Earth to relocate the observatory a second time– literally. Because of Chabot Observatory’s location almost directly on top of the Hayward Fault, and the fact that the aging buildings were not quake– safe in the first place, another site had to be found: the present location of Chabot Space & Science Center, adjacent to Redwood Peak.

Happy 125th to Oakland’s special connection with the stars!

Benjamin Burress is a staff astronomer at The Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.

Nyla – found safe and soundYesterday, a 10:00 am Text Message from friend stated:

My Dog Nyla had disappeared. I could use some help.

My reply:

Whatever you need.

I know what it is like to have a missing pet. When my cat Tucker slipped out two years ago around the winter holidays, I was distraught. I feared he was stuck in the garage of a vacationing family, hit by a car, starving in an alley, wet, cold and crying for me somewhere in the streets. I did everything to find him, creating a 'CSI Oakland' headquarters at my house. Though I did not find Tucker, I did feel at peace with my efforts and felt able to advise my friend on his search. The trick is to turn your guilt, fear and sadness into positive energy and to take immediate action!

1. Reach out to Friends and Family: Right away, reach out and ask for help. You would be surprised who steps up and offers their time, so give them the chance to do so.

2. Create an e-mail list of your team and keep them updated.

3. Flyers, postcards and business cards: It is PR time. Arm yourself with the flyers, tape, staplers and tacks and hit up the neighborhood. Use your most current photo of your dog and create bright-colored flyers, as well as smaller postcards or business cards. Post your flyers right away and everywhere within 1 mile of where the pet went missing. Post in coffee shops, store windows, video stores, parks, pools, churches and local hangouts. State clearly, "MISSING DOG". Include what neighborhood the dog is missing from and when he/she was last seen, as well as your phone number and a description of the dog. If you are offering a reward leave out one detail of the description (eye color or odd patch on belly) in order to weed through responses.

4. Network: Set out in teams and talk to people. Give out the cards to your neighbors, dog walkers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, local police, neighborhood youth, the postman, garbage woman and everyone you meet. Give them away at the farmer's market, shopping center and BART station, wherever you can encounter the most local people. Almost everyone can relate to a lost pet and most will be sympathetic to your mission.

5. Contact Pet Places: visit your local Animal Control, Humane Society, rescue places, veterinary offices, pet stores and pet supply places. Check their found dogs and give them flyers to post. With Animal Control, you must go in immediately and visit often. You can post in their Lost Dog binder and check the Found Dog one. Staff will show you current found dogs and, sadly, the police deceased animal cards. Bay Area Shelters are at www.animalservices.org/uploaded_files/shelterlist.pdf or www.labrescue.org/Pages/bayareashelters.htm.

6. Craigslist: As always, a fantastic resource. Use Craigslist to list your missing pet, but also use it to check for found dogs. Try the newspaper, as well.

7. Call the Police: Most officers are quite willing to take a card and keep an eye out.

8. Look: With a friend, look for your dog in his/her favorite places, like a friends' yard or the local dog park. Call to them, rattle their leash, squeak their favorite toy or use an Acme dog whistle as you walk.

9. Stay Positive

and

10. Do Not Give Up! Pets have been known to find their way back home after being lost for several months.

Now for the good news: thanks to flyers (#2 above), someone called with a lead late last night and Nyla was found. Hey, it works!

Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

latitude: 37.7502, longitude: -122.148

There's nothing like a trip away from the city lights to remind you just how bad light pollution can be here in the Bay Area.

The Milky Way in the skies of Death Valley's
Devil's Racetrack. Credit: Dan Duriscoe, U.S. National
Park ServiceI just got back from my semi-yearly pilgrimage to my favorite spot on Earth: Death Valley National Park. My main reasons for returning to this place again and again have mostly to do with hiking in the stunning natural beauty of the place, reconnecting with good times in my childhood, and reflecting spiritually on life, the Universe, and everything.

But, I can't go to a place like that and not feel more connected with outer space. Not only is the night sky a celestial spectacle–but it's darned cold there too, this time of year! Cold, like space. Each turn of the Earth through its own shadow is like a quick dip in the icy pool of space….

After twilight had faded, after the campfire had burned to embers–and as the frigid cold of the desert winter night started seeping through my layers of clothing–I lay down on the picnic bench and raised my binoculars to my eyes…

…and that's all I had to do. Arcing overhead was the section of the Milky Way around the constellations Cassiopeia, Perseus, Andromeda, Pegasus–a section of the sky rich in a variety of "deep sky" objects (objects typically only visible through binoculars or telescopes).

There was the Double Cluster in Perseus–a pair of "open" clusters of stars.

Open clusters are stars bound together gravitationally, still clinging to each other after their "group infancy" in the gaseous cloud that gave birth to them. Stars in these clusters are young–and because of their youth, open clusters often contain a number of large, bright, blue stars that shine brilliantly–but which have short life spans as stars go, being more prolific hydrogen-burners (gas guzzlers). (In a word, you can't find an old blue giant star.)

You can't avoid seeing open clusters in this region; the place is positively littered with them….

This is also where the famous Andromeda Galaxy can be found, in the constellation Andromeda (where else?). What's special about the Andromeda Galaxy? For one, it's the closest large galaxy to our own, as well as the most distant object in the Universe that can be seen with the unaided human eye (without telescopic help). Looking at the Andromeda is like looking through a peephole into the realm beyond our Milky Way…

I could go on and on yakking about what I got to see in the clear, dark Death Valley skies last week, so I'll have to stop myself now. Suffice to say that with a dark sky, a pair of binoculars, and a segment of the Milky Way in view, encountering the celestial wonders of the Universe in a very personal way is like shooting ducks in a barrel.

But don't let the light polluted skies of the Bay Area stop you from trying it from your own backyard; there's a lot to behold despite the city lights…

Benjamin Burress is a staff astronomer at The Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.