Night at the Museum 4

After weeks of talking about it, monitoring the tab for “Astronomy After Hours” on my web browser and even making a failed attempt to go a few weeks back, we finally made it to that damn planetarium. Well, planetarium is a rather gracious word for it, more like an observatory, but it was weirdly one of my most surreal Boston experiences yet. Running between 8:30 and 10 p.m. on the roof of the Museum of Science is an observatory that is open every Friday from March until the week before Thanksgiving (yep, this is time sensitive information because this Friday is the last one!). So, in typical Lauren-and-her-friends fashion, we decided to go around 9 p.m. during the penultimate week. After mentally preparing myself to get out of the warmth of my bed, I was pleasantly surprised at the painless simplicity of the trip. It’s really easy for me to pretend that Boston is another universe, a space beyond our bubble that only the brave of heart can venture into if you give yourself half the day. But, surprisingly, even these 90-minute trips are so worth it.

Perhaps it was seeing the breadth of the open sky from a slit in a gargantuan engraved dome while standing upon the roof of a grand museum, surrounded by the glimmering lights of Boston skyscrapers and the twinkling of the water along the Charles, but I suddenly realized how close everything is. For the first time, I really understood the bounty of what is around us, and the very real worth of venturing out. I know, these are pretty surprising conclusions for spending 20 minutes outside to see two stars in a telescope. You see, “Astronomy After Hours” is really just a line of people formed on the roof late at night, waiting to go into a dark, domed observatory to use a high-power telescope and see whatever stars are visible that night. Yes, it was quite cold, but the view that surrounds you is a decent distraction and many times there will be some museum experts reciting some interesting astrological facts as you await your turn.

To be honest, in many ways the “event” is disappointing. While the rose-lit observatory is an interesting space with photography materials scattered across the counter and a telescope the size of a cannon in the center pointing out into the depths of the night, all you really get to do is hop on a ladder for three minutes and see a (very blurry) star or two. Yet, for some reason, everyone comes out with a grin. I think it’s a mixture of the concept of space and the fact that even if this wasn’t a rocket sending me out to the moon, it’s still an interaction with the universe that I certainly don’t get to have 99.9999 percent of my days. To commit even just an hour to acknowledge our tininess in the grand scheme of all that is not just around us, but that which is enveloping us, is pretty wild. For me, it was a necessary break from the self-importance of college and a real way to ground me. As I looked across the faces of my companions I kind of knew that they too, in their own personal way, were reflecting on the greater connotations of going to an observatory, and that, the acknowledgment of a whole universe beyond my routine path of Wren à Carm à Eaton à repeat, is what makes “Astronomy After Hours” so worth it. If you’re in need of some accessible mysticism, I encourage you to check it out.