Stars In Their Eyes

Had the warden at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York agreed to turn off the lights in the exercise yard, it might have been possible to see a galaxy. But turning off the lights is not something you do at a maximum-security prison. So the 18 students in the inmate astronomy class--who were getting their first chance to peek through a telescope at the impossibly open sky above them--had to content themselves with the moon and Saturn.

But even that was enough to stagger the hardened bunch: some of the inmates actually wept. "It propelled them so far outside of where they are, they didn't have words to describe it," says Marymount College astronomy professor Bob Berman, who teaches the prison course. By the end of the class, even some of the guards were peering through the telescope.

The Bedford crowd is not alone in its enchantment with the cosmos. In recent years an odd sort of celestial rapture has spread across the country. Whether it's driven by a longing for a larger world, for post-9/11 meaning or simply for the pleasure of a silent field beneath a riotous sky, more and more Americans are falling in love with the heavens. There's Erica Block, 15, of Lincoln, Neb., who sold her horse and emptied her bank account to buy a $1,000 telescope that, she boasts, is taller than she is. There's Evan Chan, a Los Angeles tour operator who a year ago spent his free time watching TV and now--$10,000 worth of equipment later--is no longer chained to his remote. There are Clark and Deb Cheney, who sold their home in a busy part of Nebraska and moved to the more remote town of Plattsmouth simply because the night sky is darker there.

The evidence of the trend is more than anecdotal. Membership in the nation's largest amateur group, the Astronomical League, has more than doubled since 1990. State and local astronomy clubs can be found almost anywhere with little more than a Google search. New York City, one of the most light-polluted places on Earth, boasts a 350-member stargazing group.

The market for telescopes and peripherals has exploded too, and with affordable star-tracking software, digital cameras and access to global-positioning systems (GPS), self-taught stargazers can discover comets and supernovas on their own, thus democratizing this once elite science. Amateurs helped track the trajectory of the doomed shuttle Columbia. Indeed, the very distinction between amateur and professional astronomy may be vanishing. "There are professionals who can't even tell you the exact location of a galaxy they have been studying," says Berman. "And then there are so-called amateurs for whom the sky is a second home."