By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

Dade’s favorite amateur astronomer, Ned Smith, kicks off this year’s edition of his StarGaze project at 6:30 p.m. this Thursday on the Trenton courthouse square, weather permitting. The public is invited to bundle up and come out for a free peek at the starry firmament through one of Smith’s powerful telescopes.

Smith started the series last December and was met with lines of children who ringed the square waiting for their turn at the big ‘scope. He responded to the enthusiasm by repeating the demonstrations once a month. 

Eventually, Smith moved those monthly sessions south down Highway 11 to the county athletic fields. “That didn’t work because nobody could find us,” he said. “So this year we’re moving back to the courthouse square. It’s not an ideal location but everybody knows where it is.”

Similarly, last Thursday might have been better for sky-watching than this one because of the Geminids meteor shower that peaked that night. Smith said the meteors are visible for perhaps two nights before and two after peak. A week later is too late.

What will be visible this week is the moon, Jupiter and Jupiter’s moons. “After that, it’s kind of a guess what we can see through the sky pollution,” he said. There are about 25 interesting celestial features, including other galaxies, that may or may not be discernible depending on the weather, he said.

Smith said last year he discontinued the monthly stargazing sessions after daylight savings time kicked in, because that made all-the-way-dark too late for youngsters to stay out on school nights.

However, he said, some regular StarGaze attendees came out to his home observatory in August to view the transit of Venus in the daytime. This event is when the planet passes in front of the sun. “That will not be visible again for 110 years,” said Smith.  

In other astronomic business, Smith reported that he had contributed at Creek Hill Observatory to a Harvard University paper on this year’s asteroid occultation, and that he had acquired two new telescopes, a 25-inch “light bucket” for tracking asteroid occultations and an 8-inch “RC” on an equatorial mount for astrophotography. The latter will not be operational until Smith finishes building the mount, but after that he hopes to have impressive starry-firmament pictures to share.

Until then, he hopes to see fellow stargazing enthusiasts on the square Thursday night. And to those who may worry that Thursday is their next-to-last night to sort the sock drawer before the universe blinks out of existence on Dec. 21 in accordance with the Mayan Long Calendar, Smith joins NASA and other scientifically-minded pundits in saying:  Stop worrying.

 “The earth is over 4 billion years old,” he said. “Anything that could have happened has already happened. No lineup of the planets is going to cause the world to end.”