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The Wilson family of Hollister took a trip to the stars courtesy of amateur astronomers David Baumgartner and Ronald Ober after placing a winning bid for a star party at the July 29 Sip, Savor & Celebrate CASA fundraiser at Eden Rift Winery. Setting their telescopes outside the Wilson home, Baumgartner and Ober were able to give the family a guided tour of planets and galaxies.
“I had a telescope years and years ago when my kids were little,” Phil Wilson said. “Now I have grandkids that I thought would really enjoy doing this, so it seemed it would be a great idea to bid on this and try to win it.”
Baumgartner brought his 8-inch Orion Ritchey-Chretien telescope, which uses wi-fi to display images on a tablet. Ober assisted with his 11-inch Celestron Reflector which uses a more traditional eyepiece.
Baumgartner, who has contributed over 75 astronomy articles to BenitoLink, traces his interest in astronomy back to his youth when he was given a telescope for Christmas.
“I immediately picked it up, took it outside and started using it,” he said. “My mother tried to get me to open up the rest of my presents, and I said, ‘No, I got what I wanted.’ And I just kind of hung on since then.”
As they were setting up their equipment, Phil’s wife, Marisa Wilson, speculated on what the group might be observing that night.
“I am mainly hoping to see planets like Saturn,” she said. “But even more, my grandchildren are just starting to talk about the stars, and I am looking forward to them learning about them from experts.”
As Ober was locating the first objects that the group would observe, Baumgartner gave a talk that set the scale of celestial distances using a golf ball as an example. If you were to shrink the sun down to the size of that ball, he said, the dwarf planet Pluto—orbiting 3.2 billion miles from Earth—would be approximately six football fields away.
As the evening progressed, the two astronomers were able to locate major objects like the Swan Galaxy, 5,500 light-years away and the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.537 million light-years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, or 5.9 trillion miles. This would place the Andromeda Galaxy a hard-to-grasp 149,683,000,000,000,000,000 miles away.
Saturn, 842 million miles away, was the first object to be seen and the sharp definition of the planet seemed to leave a particularly deep impression.
“Looking at Saturn with all the detail you see, it does not look real,” Phil said.”It is in that perfect shape, with a ring around it. It is just phenomenal. And this evening has been very much worth it.”
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