Starry, Starry Nights

I admit that on hearing ''star party,'' I thought of Nebraskans like Marlon Brando, Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson returning for their high school reunions. Imagine astronomy experienced not from the plush seats in a planetarium but from a blanket spread under a big picnic of stars: that's a star party. Astronomers abandon their solitary posts and gather with amateurs and their families to exclaim over all the nebulas, galaxies, clusters, comets and mysterious ''objects'' that crowd the sky when the lights are off. They also haul in enormous homemade telescopes, fly kites with glow sticks to confuse other astronomers, and teach Optics 101.

Although astronomy clubs run small star parties in some communities every month, the big ones are organized once a year, usually in the summer. In the last decade, these larger star parties have increased in size dramatically, with hundreds and sometimes well over a thousand participants, in places as diverse as North Dakota, the Grand Canyon and the Florida Keys. Looking at the heavens not only gives these new enthusiasts perspective on distant worlds but also the quiet to contemplate their own.

At the end of July, I spent three days at the weeklong Nebraska Star Party with my husband, Steve, and my 12-year-old son, Frankie. Although Steve claims to have found many objects in the dark, not all of them car keys, I am a neophyte, unable to spot anything more spectacular than the occasional shooting star.

The star party was perfect for me because it is one of the most beginner-friendly. Sponsored by the Prairie Astronomy Club of Lincoln and the Omaha Astronomical Society, it holds three two-hour field school sessions covering beginning astronomy, equipment and astrophotography. The $25 registration fee included those sessions with a 50-page instructional booklet (the first page, I was relieved to find, showed how to locate the Big Dipper), plus an ice cream social, a beach barbecue and a party with speakers.

On one night the party is open to anyone, registered or not; an experienced astronomer locates constellations for visitors with a laser pointer. The atmosphere was so relaxed, I was not laughed out of the galaxy when I asked why our T-shirts featured Mars. (Answer: In August, Mars was the closest to Earth that it's been in nearly 60,000 years.)

One family has attended for six years without a telescope. They wander from scope to scope asking for peeks. Passionate stargazers from as far away as the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines have traveled to Nebraska to participate. If the astronomy clubs' enthusiasm doesn't persuade attendees to become amateur astronomers after they leave, their door prizes should. At the ice cream social, the swap meet and the barbecue, and following every field session, the astronomers gave away binoculars, star charts, refractors -- seemingly everything astronomical but a telescope itself.

Every evening after astronomer's twilight -- about 11 -- when the stars began to dazzle and seemed to burn through the black, the three of us made our way through a forest of telescopes planted in the tough grass of the Sandhills. What seemed to be millions more stars than I'd ever imagined lighted the way. Even veteran observers were astounded by the brightness of the night sky. Three galaxies were visible, the stars had color, and the Milky Way bulged noticeably. I even managed to spot a very red Mars -- the color of a blood orange -- rising in the southeast.

To view the Cat's Eye Nebula, I climbed a 10-foot ladder and peered into the eyepiece of a ''light bucket,'' a huge homemade Dobsonian telescope with a 30-inch diameter. Starlight blinded me. The owner told me all about John Dobson, the man who, starting in the 1950's, revolutionized amateur astronomy by finding inexpensive ways to build big telescopes. I also checked out computer-controlled scopes and tried binoculars, said to be the best instrument for the beginner. Sitting comfortably in an observing chair, a sort of La-Z-Boy with binoculars attached, I began to understand how you could spend all night spellbound by stars. By the time I returned to my own two yard-sale telescopes, I had no trouble finding the space station and five meteors.

For our stay at the star party, Steve and Frankie decided to camp under the stars next to the telescopes. I opted to sleep in the quiet of a motel. Lord Ranch Resort was next to the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge about half an hour away. Driving there at 1 a.m., I spotted a burrowing owl sitting on the road. Returning to the field school the next day, I saw two wild turkeys, a huge white airborne goose, and two pelicans circling in a nearby pond. My husband and son awoke to meadowlarks.

Such remoteness means that breakfast is hard to find if you don't take it yourself. We drove 30 miles, with absolutely no traffic, to Jordan's Fine Dining in Valentine, the town closest to the observation site. Its sparse population of a little under 3,000 assures stargazers of very low light pollution. Local legend has it that most of the inhabitants are millionaire ranchers, people who own a lot of land with nothing on it but cattle. Ted Turner owns almost a half-million acres nearby, raising bison for his new restaurant chain.