The Night Sky

Where do you take a kid who is obsessed with planets and moons? How about the McCormick Observatory?

We showed up early to beat the rush. There was only one other inhabited car to park next to. The general population must not have caught on.

Shane and I had to fill 40 minutes before the observatory opened to the public. Thankfully, there were lots of rocks.

The street made a convenient track, as well.

Shane wanted to climb the water tower, but I only let him poke it with sticks.

There were plenty of those around, because the observatory was on top of an Appalachian hill.

There was a house next to the observatory that caught my eye. I wonder what it would be like to live on a hill and work at the observatory. The city is minutes away, but the hilltop feels like it's own small world. If you're into astronomy, I can't imagine there's a much better place to be.

Except maybe a modern observatory. I bet they have some really neat tools. I'll take Shane to one of those if he remains interested in the stars.

He loved the old telescope we saw. 

You have to manually move a scaffold and chair around the room to be able to reach and use the lens.

It killed me that it was overcast and raining off and on! The dome never opened! Shane would have LOVED it!

The rest of the observatory included a mini-museum.

I don't know if they change the theme, but it seemed devoted to Saturn and it's moons for our visit.

We will have to visit again to see if anything changes. I don't know enough about the history of the observatory to know if there's a connection.

They had some meteorite fragments in a case Shane did not knock over. The oldest was from 1891, I think.

And, of course, Shane wanted to scope out the bathroom. 

I didn't expect to see an actual bath in there.

I took a lot of pictures, but we only stayed in the observatory for half an hour. Shane wanted to stay for the talk and "look at pictures on the computer." I declined.

The guide let us take a look through the finder scope on our way out.

I bet Shane will want to visit again! UVA has another modern observatory out there somewhere, too. I'll have to do some research when Shane's at daycare on Monday.