When Planets Collide

[lydamorehouse]

Rachel K. invited my family out for stargazing Monday night.  When I asked Mason about it, he got hopping excited.  Can we see Pluto?  Can we see Uranus?  How about Jupiter?  Saturn?  Then, when I told him that Rachel couldn’t even get started until after midnight, I thought he was going to burst with excitement.  Up past midnight…?  *swoon*

 

Shawn really wanted to come along, too, but she’s been awfully tired lately.  (It’s partly my fault.  I’ve been keeping her up late for several nights in a row – wink, wink, nudge, nudge, knowwhatImean, knowwhatImean?)  Anyway, we put Mason to bed at his usual time (around 7:00/8:00 pm).  Shawn played with our new external hard drive (FreeAgent… whoo, the yellow bar looks like a cylon…whooo,) while I avoided work on the official revisions for “her” ROMANCING THE DEAD (although I did begin a bit.  I’ve got some gnarly pacing problems to deal with, alas.) 

 

At eleven thirty, I couldn’t wake up Mason.  I told Shawn that I was thinking about heading out by myself, alone.  I got ready and started up the car.  I sat in front of the house with the car running, thinking.  Would a good parent let her kid sleep in?  After all, tomorrow was a school day (albeit only a fun summer class “Castles and Dragons.”) Or, was the better parent thing to whip on the light and drag the boy out to see something fairly spectacular?  Believe it or not, I chose option number 2.  I tried to wake up Shawn, too, but she had crashed hard.  In retrospect, I should have whipped on Shawn’s light too.  She was awfully sad to have missed Mason’s first astronomy moment.

 

Mason woke up completely by the time he got in the car.  Then he got right giddy.  There were a lot of odd pre-schooler observations:  “Do you think we’ll see a Wobeggong?” (A type of coral reef shark that’s nocturnal).  “I’ll be everyone’s going to Edina to the McDonalds!” (He once noticed they had a sign that said they were open twenty-four hours.) 

 

After meeting up with Rachel, we went off to the MLK Park in Minneapolis.  Not probably not the best in terms of light pollution, but I’d previously insisted that we stay somewhat close by for our first experience since I did have to try to get Mason back to sleep and I was afraid a long drive would either make him fall back asleep before viewing or keep him awake too long afterward.  It was pretty perfect for a first time.  The park was deserted.  Rachel had Mason look first at Jupiter.  Her telescope is large enough that, with some squinting, you can see the gas swirls on the planet surface.  I thought I caught an image of the red storm, but I could have hallucinated it.  Mason was so excited to see Jupiter’s moons; he leaped around like Bambi in the meadow.  He said, “I LOVE looking at Jupiter!  I love it!”  Rachel was really good at encouraging him to be patient with observing, and I think it paid off.  By the time we’d looked at the surface of the moon, Antares, and a binary star, Mason was so wild he just wanted run around like a tornado.  We turned the game into planet crashes and then galaxy crashes… which may have baffled Rachel a bit, but it was Mason’s expression of extreme joy.

 

I hope that we were respectful enough of her things that we get invited back.  As soon as we woke up the next morning Mason said, “Can we call Rachel and go stargazing again?” 

 

Even so, when I asked Mason if he now wanted to be an astronaut or astronomer when he grew up, he said, “Nope.  I’d still rather dig up dinosaur bones.”  I said, “Well, maybe you could do that on the Moon.” 

 

“Yeah!”

Comments

[jiawen]

We turned the game into planet crashes and then galaxy crashes… which may have baffled Rachel a bit, but it was Mason’s expression of extreme joy.

I wasn't really baffled, more just worried that he was bored with astronomizing.

I also hope I wasn't too didactic. Still, it seems like astronomy is a great way for him to get less afraid of the dark. The darker the sky is, the more beautiful things you can see.

There will definitely be a next time, though I think we should go someplace darker if possible. There won't be much that's different for a couple months. Unless Mason wants to just look at Jupiter again...? (Well, the moons will be in different places, anyway.)

[carlamlee.livejournal.com]

He said, “I LOVE looking at Jupiter! I love it!”

This makes me want to go stargaze; it also makes me remember the excitement and the joy of seeing something for the first time. What a cute kid.