Last night Duke and I went with friends to the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. I enjoyed the exhibits but the planetarium and the telescopes were the highlights of the evening. I didn’t know this but their telescopes are open to the public free of charge every Friday and Saturday night. It was so cool to go out into the night air in the dim red light and look at Venus through the refractor telescope. We looked out the window and saw Venus in the west and then looked through the telescope and saw that Venus looked just like a half moon. It was also really cool to realize that the telescope
is the original 1883 instrument donated by Anthony Chabot who founded
the center. We also looked through the telescope which is the largest refractor in the western United open for public viewing and saw the globular cluster M15. It gave me shivers.
The planetarium at Chabot was just reopened recently. It has the latest and greatest in the way of planetarium equipment. The man who gave presentation had just the right amount of fascination and awe about the universe mixed with a scientific skepticism and telling of the facts. The planetarium night sky was wonderful. At one point he raised the lights a bit to show us how the lights of the bay area wash out the stars. I think that was part of what made the bay area night sky of the planetarium so awe inspiring, It was just like we were up in the back country of the Sierras able to see the millions of stars that take your breath away.
When we left the planetarium we went for dinner to the Downtown Restaurant in Berkeley. Last time we went there the dinner was great and this time I thought it was even better.
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