Real Florida:
Paradise through a telescope lens

[Times photo: Carlton Ward Jr.] Dean Von Pusch looks at the stars using his 30-inch-diameter Starmaster 30 telescope at the Chiefland Astronomy Village Star Party this month. Von Pusch drove to Chiefland from his home in St. Petersburg in his motor home, towing a trailer custom-built for the $18,000 telescope.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 2, 2001

One man's passion for astronomy created a worldwide community of stargazers. But now the darkness he loves has taken on another meaning.

CHIEFLAND -- Billy Dodd had to go to the doctor for the latest blood test. He returned to his farm in the late afternoon. The skies were cloudy, but clearing, and Billy hoped the night would be kind to astronomers.

The field next to his house was crowded with tents, trailers and telescopes. Some telescopes were the kind you might buy in department stores. But most were veritable cannons. Looking through their eyepieces meant a 10-foot climb up a ladder. Some telescopes were so long, their owners had towed them in custom-built trailers.

Billy looked at his pasture, and the hundreds of astronomers and their telescopes, with his one good eye. He stroked his jutting jaw and asked, "Ain't it a mess I made?"

The Woodstock for astronomers was in full swing.

[Photo courtesy of Jack Newton] Solar prominences explode thousands of miles up from the sun’s surface.

A former baker who usually wears suspenders and a ball cap advertising farm implements, Billy Dodd made it possible. In 1985, he and Momma -- that's what he calls wife, Alice -- drove their van 35,000 miles around the state. Among the most gifted amateur astronomers in Florida, Billy was sick of the light-polluted skies of his home county, Pinellas. He wanted to find the darkest place in Florida to build a home and, not incidentally, a modest observatory.

He found dark sky paradise about three hours north of Tampa Bay, near the Suwannee River, the Gulf of Mexico and several Levy County wildlife preserves. He set up his telescope and looked at galaxies and star clusters and comets and declared himself satisfied.

He planted cedar trees to block out lights from passing cars and stationary farmhouses. If a neighbor turned on a porch light, Billy drove over and volunteered to install a special shield to take care of the problem. Then he could train his telescope on the heavens and take the photographs that had made him famous.

Billy neglected to keep his dark sky farm a secret. As years passed, other amateur astronomers built homes next to Billy's. Now the area is known as the Chiefland Astronomy Village. Seventeen other homes keep Billy's house company. Nobody keeps cars in their garages. That's because roofs roll open so telescopes can point to the sky.

Twice a year, Billy and his neighbors advertise their "star parties" in national astronomy magazines. From all over the country -- actually, from all over the world -- astronomers arrive in droves.

The fall Star Party, in November, lasts a week. Billy and his leaders hold barbecues and seminars while astronomers awaiting nightfall play harmonicas and strum guitars and, of course, argue about who has the best telescopes. You never hear music or much talk until late afternoon. People sleep late after long nights at their scopes.

When it's dark, it's pitch dark, except for the soft glow of flashlights covered by red lenses. A soft red light doesn't destroy night vision or ruin a photograph. Billy Dodd also has rules regarding car lights. If you have to leave the farm, don't turn on headlights. Okay, you can use your parking lights. And kindly disengage the courtesy light inside the car. Nobody thinks of courtesy lights as a threat except Billy.

Of course, if you forget, Billy has posted grim-faced helpers out on the road to remind you to extinguish headlights.

After dark, in the astronomy fields, you hear murmuring about the Crab Nebula or the gas cloud in Orion's belt and so on. If one of the murmurs has a Southern accent, you might be listening to Billy Dodd.

He enjoys looking through telescopes more than anything in the world, only he doesn't stargaze much anymore. At the age of 57, he is living an astronomer's worst nightmare. He is afraid he might be going blind.

Room for amateurs

[Times photo: Carlton Ward Jr.] Jack Newton, a part-time resident at the Chiefland Astronomy Village, is among the best-known astrophotographers in the world. Through his computer-controlled telescope, fitted with special lenses, he made the photographs below.

When most people think of astronomers, they think of scientists with a capital "S," white-coated geeks who can say "E=mc2" and have an idea what it means. In professional observatories all over the world, on any given night, astronomers are at work.

Yet astronomy is different from other scientific disciplines. It leaves plenty of room for amateurs. Passionate, sometimes a little nutty, amateurs will devote hours and hours to studying a tiny patch of sky in the hopes of discovering a new comet or exploding star. Sleep-deprived, they'll go to their real jobs at dawn.

Amateurs invent telescopes. They build and polish mirrors used in telescopes. They develop cameras and photographic techniques. At the Chiefland Astronomy Village's Star Party, in the dark fields, along the dirt roads, you see the whole gamut. Some visitors arrive with nothing but tents and their eyes. Others carry binoculars. Some amateurs, engineers and salespeople, have fine store-bought scopes. Others are machinists who can do anything with their hands including building scopes. Some drive old junky cars. Some arrive in huge RVs. A few residents live in mobile homes. Others have built substantial houses.

[Photos courtesy of Jack Newton] The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.1-million light years from Earth, is actually visible to the naked eye -- if you’re stargazing from a very dark site. The Helix Nebula.

Jack Newton runs what is probably the only bed and breakfast for astronomers in America. He spends warm months in British Columbia and the rest in Florida. His guests pay $100 a night to stay. They get breakfast, of course, and a crack at Newton's $100,000 worth of astronomy equipment when it turns dark.

He owns a half-dozen expensive scopes, computers and cameras. He might be the best-known astrophotographer in North America, if not the world. His photos appear in every astronomy magazine on the planet. He has published five books, including Splendors of the Universe.

"I'm here because Billy Dodd found this place," he said in the late afternoon. Billy sat on the front porch and tried to figure out if the clouds would clear. "It's a wonderful place, a close-knit community, this place Billy founded. Instead of borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor, you borrow an eyepiece for your telescope."

He touched buttons on a computer keyboard. His telescope, a huge Meade 16X200 EMC, automatically swung toward the setting sun.

"Hey, Billy," Newton said. "Want to look at the sun?"

"Uh-huh," Billy said.

It was perfectly safe. The lens was special.

Billy used his good right eye to stare into the eyepiece. He saw explosions of fire, solar prominences, leaping off the plane of the sun.

"Ain't too bad," Billy said. "Ain't too bad at all. If a scope is big enough, I don't see too bad."

A hobby grows

[Photo courtesy of Jack Newton] Billy Dodd covered 35,000 miles of road in Florida with his wife, Alice, trying to find the perfect spot to watch the night sky. He settled on an area about three hours north of Tampa Bay, and other amateur astronomers followed him.

Billy grew up on a southern Illinois farm and remembers lying on a haystack and staring at the night sky. Later, in the Navy, he enjoyed stargazing from the stern of the ship.

He knew nothing about stars except that he found them endlessly fascinating. Later, he and Alice and their children moved to Florida. A neighbor purchased a dime-store telescope and let Billy use it.

He told Alice he wanted his own scope. You have to know Alice to understand that Billy was treading on dangerous ground. She is funny as can be, in an Alice Kramden kind of way. She let Billy buy his scope.

A few years down the pike, Billy cleared his throat and told Alice he wanted to buy a Celestron-14, at that time the Cadillac of amateur telescopes.

"How much?" asked Alice, cutting to the chase.

"Ten thousand bucks," Billy said.

"Build me a pool first," Alice countered.

For the next few years Billy baked like a man possessed, working hour after hour in overtime. He also tried his hand at wedding photography. Alice got her pool, and Billy got a telescope so big he liked to tell people: "I'm just glad it don't eat."

He still owns the telescope. It resides inside his observatory. A sign on the outside wall says "Beware of Owner." Next to it is a picture of a great big gun pointed at your forehead. When Billy used to drive, before his eyes began to fail, he tooled around in a pickup truck with his deer rifle in the back window. He liked venison. Still does, of course, but can't see well enough to shoot.

At least he can fish. He and Alice go in the gulf and catch trout. Fish is good for your heart.

Billy Dodd once was stronger than a mule. He had a big garden he tended during the day. And sometimes, even as dusk approached and he opened the roof to the observatory, he'd stop and say, "Wait a minute, I forgot to milk the goats."

Now he feels frail.

Two years ago he suffered a heart attack. Then came the diabetes. The diabetes damaged his eyes. He has scars on the inside of his eyeballs.

Now his kidneys are failing.

He doesn't complain, though.

"You'd never know he's sick," said his friend John O'Neill, a Pinellas County resident who is considering building a weekend house in Chiefland. "He doesn't dwell on being sick. He lives one day at a time. And he has lots of fun."

O'Neill, who has an advertising business in Seminole, met Billy about five years ago when he spent a weekend in Chiefland. Soon he bought a telescope. And then another. "It's not a cheap sport," he said. "But buying a telescope is cheaper than buying a bass boat."

Dean Von Pusch could have said "amen." Born in Tampa, Von Pusch lives in Snell Isle and heads up to Chiefland whenever he can. For the Star Party he arrived in a 37-foot motor home with every luxury. Behind it he towed a custom-built trailer. Inside the trailer was his Starmaster 30. It's about 12 feet long and computer-controlled. Price tag: $18,000.

"That's some scope," Billy Dodd told him. Billy walked through the large crowd of astronomers while the sun was still up and he could see okay. Many pumped his hand, and some shyly introduced themselves, reminded him of a phone call or two over the years.

Everybody asked how he was doing. Another guy pretended to bow at his feet.

"We are not worthy," the man said.

"Gad," said Billy.

[Times photo: Carlton Ward Jr.] John O’Neill of Seminole sets up his digital camera to connect to his telescope during the week of the Star Party. Only red lights are allowed because they do not hurt night vision or damage photographs. O’Neill now owns land in Chiefland.

Darkness falls

[Times photo: Carlton Ward Jr.] Montana Ruland carries her telescope to her father’s car. Joe Ruland, right background, of Bradenton packs up his astronomy and camping gear after watching the Leonid meteor shower at the astronomy village.

At dusk, the sky started clearing, not perfectly, but enough for minimal stargazing. The sun dipped behind the oaks in the gulf and red lights came on. Computers hummed -- years ago Billy installed 5,000 feet of wiring in his fields -- and telescopes tipped toward particular stars and galaxies.

Steve Neal, who has been a Coast Guard boatswain for 29 years, pointed his 16-inch scope at the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.1-million light years away. Through the eyepiece the galaxy looked like a fuzzy ball. Next he found the double cluster of Cassiopeia. Finally, through trial and error, he located Comet LINEAR (C/2000 WM1), which looked like the end of a Q-Tip.

"How about that?" Neal asked. His friend Ray Jones of Orlando took a turn at the scope. Jones is a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral. "I was in submarines during my career," he said. "I was in the Navy for 34 years, and I figured it out once that I spent 51/2 years under the water. I think it's why I appreciate the sky so much."

In the dark, a few hundred feet away, Billy and Alice sat next to a friend's trailer. Billy wishes he could appreciate the sky like he once did.

"When it gets this dark, I'm afraid to walk around," Billy said. "Alice is my seeing eye dog."

Alice didn't thank him for the compliment. Of course, she knows the big lug is not a romantic type of guy. "He used to carry pictures of galaxies in his wallet instead of me," she said.

Billy giggled.

[Times photo: Carlton Ward Jr.] A brightening sky just before dawn Nov. 18 sheds light on the telescopes, campers, cars and tents belonging to Star Party participants, who had filled the Chiefland Astronomy Village the previous week.

A shooting star flashed by in the southern sky. Billy didn't see it. He stared into the dark, laughed.

"I'm a little nervous anymore," he said. "I sit long enough and Mama here gets to pokin' me with a big needle."

"I enjoy it," Alice said.

She has learned to do kidney dialysis on Billy at home. He needs it five times a week now.

"Ah, well," Billy said. "What can you do? I guess it's time to go in. Good night, you all."

AT A GLANCE

The Web site for the Chiefland Astronomy Village is www.c-av.com. For information about astrophotographer Jack Newton, call (352) 490-9032. His Web site is www.jacknewton.com.

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