Friday night my family and I went to a spectacular event sponsored by the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort. It was called “Starry Night” just like the famous painting by Van Gogh. It was held on the Cranes Landing Golf Course which was the perfect spot for astronomers and astronomy fans to view the amazing sights of the beyond. All of the astronomers, from 4 different clubs, gathered together in the middle of the golf course to show off their equipment, big or small, and took advantage of the absent city lights to view the Moon, Jupiter, Jupiter’s 4 moons, a double star called Alberio, and even the E.T. Star cluster, that happens to look just like E.T.

Not only astronomy was a factor of this event, but the Marriott Resort supplied terrific food. There was a nice spread of burgers, hot dogs, brats, grilled chicken breast and served with coleslaw, macaroni and cheese and bean salad. For desert they had simple, yet delicate sugar cookies themed like stars and crescent moons, which perfectly set the mood for the upcoming night. They also had a couple people inside the golf shop that had set up different demonstrations and would explain them to the guests. One of them explained to me his “drawing in space” technique, which created 3D like art out of rubber using space and light. The other one had a few telescopes set up, and explained the inside story on the different kinds of them and how they work to show us the images.
Finally it was time to go out into the golf course to view the stars. We passed by the resort’s glow-in-the-dark golf set-up, which was really cool. When we arrived to where the showing was we noticed a set-up of about 36 telescopes manned with their owners. Each of the telescopes aiming at different bits of the night sky, had kids and parents going from scope to scope with amazement in their eyes. One of the astronomers was alerting all of us of the satellites that were passing by and we were all lucky enough to view both a Russian and a Chinese satellite. The man telling us about the satellites said he had never seen the Chinese satellite before then, so it was great that we all experienced such a rare sighting. Overall it had to be one of the best experiences of my life, and I plan to watch for other events put on by the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort.

[+/-] click to show/hide this post