By David H. Levy
The 2024 Adirondack Astronomy Retreat.
Come gentle night, come loving black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
For the first time in the almost two years since my wife Wendee died in September 2022, at this year’s Adirondack Astronomy Retreat, at last I felt that life was returning to my bones. We did not have the best weather, with only one clear night, but what a night! And what a summer experience.
The primary reason for this change of spirit happened on the AAR’s first day. After spending the last year refurbishing Minerva, my primary telescope, Ed Baker, with assistance from Mark Zdiarski, arrived with this truly beautiful and magnificent little telescope that he had carefully refurbished with care and with love, and with which I completed six hours of visual comet hunting on the single clear night. I was so moved by my first look at this telescope that I interrupted the closing question of Ed Genther’s lecture to thank Ed Baker and offer to him the few Shakespearean lines that begin this article. The night prior was not clear but there were clear spots through which David Rossetter and I got a good first light on Jupiter. The first first light, in 1967, I could not see Jupiter, my favorite planet, but I did catch the Moon. It was satisfying to have, at last, a proper first light for Minerva.
This little telescope is 57 years old. It arrived on May 18, 1967, the day after I was almost expelled from the Montreal Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I have used it for each one of those 57 years.
The other reason is the people who gather each year. They are the most intelligent people I have ever known. Their only difficulty is that except for two, they are all in my generation or the one following. Those two, Sophie and Mark Scattolin, are just beginning their lives but they still have a sense of wonder about them, and about the night sky.
“In the fall,” Sophie writes, “I will be starting a master’s in environment and sustainable development at the Université de Montreal. My specialization within my program is biodiversity management, as I am quite passionate about conserving biodiversity. As for my plans after this program, I have none for now; I’m figuring it out as I go.” Sophie’s brother Marc also wrote. “I am involved in an honors project at Concordia University in Montreal. Ideally, I would get a job in natural language processing.” This field belongs to the challenging field of artificial intelligence. Sophie, please keep figuring it out as you go. It took me half a century to figure out my own professional field in relating my passion for the night sky to the richness of English literature. And Marc, may your work in AI bring this difficult field of study to a happier and more productive state.
There is a third reason for the healing magic of our retreats, and that is the Twin Valleys campsite itself. There are places on Earth that are tied for its beauty, and maybe some that are more spectacular. But for the tranquility and peace of the site that hosts our Adirondack Astronomy Retreat, there is no place as stunning. May it forever let us celebrate the stars.
