Shoot for the Moon

On Sunday night at 7:13 p.m., while most people were sitting on the couch watching stars cross the red carpet at the Academy Awards, a few lucky kids were observing something truly celestial—planets and moons on a starry, clear night—through a telescope.

Thanks to a local astronomy enthusiast on Ninth Street at the corner of Eighth Avenue. Joe Delfausse, who lives around the corner from and regularly peers through his Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope as a hobby, was on his way to dinner with his wife when he looked up towards the cloudless night sky and was amazed at how clear it was. The moon, Jupiter and Venus were shining bright, sitting up high in the black canvass. 

“I said to my wife, ‘Jeez, instead of dinner, can I look at the moon, Jupiter and Venus?’” Delfausse recounted to Patch on Sunday night while he was lifting up a couple of kids on to a milk crate to look at the Moon’s craters. “She totally understood.”

Venus, Jupiter and its four moons are visible eight months out of the year and Sunday’s clear sky was the perfect opportunity to catch a glimpse of the glittering planets. So Delfausse set up his white telescope and fixed it on the moon and helped the small crowd that began to form look through the telescope to get an up-close view of the astral bodies.

After everyone got a glimpse of the Moon and its craters, he positioned it to Jupiter and its four moons, which looked like bright white stars. After everyone got a look, he turned the telescope on to Venus.

Delfausse, who was wearing two pairs of eyeglasses, one on top of the other, said that he comes out to observe the planets in our solar system as much as he can.

A young observer, who was with his mother and younger sister, enjoyed the real-life planetary exhibit. 

“It was pretty cool seeing Jupiter and the Moon was interesting because you could see the craters,” Jacob Levinson exclaimed, who is 8 years old. “And the dark side of Moon was really clear.”