Luckily for me, I've underestimated both the power of the Hawaiian microclimate as well as the savviness of the folks at Star Gaze Hawaii (see sidebar). By the time I get to the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel, the clouds have lifted and the biggest viewing problem is that a huge silvery moon is glowing like a disco ball and causing some light pollution. But even if the sky were still overcast at the beginning of the class, presenter Wayne Fukunaga (unlike me) has done this enough to know that this isn't anything to worry about. He's got a spectacular slide show of deep-space photos prepared. This is normally the cap to the evening, but says Wayne, "if it's overcast at the beginning of class, I can show this at the beginning, and it's usually clear by the time the show's over."

On this night, there's no need to stall for time and Wayne jumps right into the program. Two eleven-inch telescopes are set up, and Wayne and his wife, Verna Fukunaga, skillfully guide them to their targets. These particular Celestron models have wide, stubby barrels like spotlights, only these instruments don't project light, thet collects it. Lots of it. The eleven-inch measurement refers to the size of the mirror at the end of the telescope. The larger this mirror, the more powerful the instrument. Eleven inches is big for an amateur 'scope, and allows a viewer to peek at smaller and dimmer objects than the average back-yard astronomer ever gets to see.

Tonight we are treated to dozens of objects, many of which I've never seen with the modest telescope I have at home. Star clusters and galaxies far, far away that are just fuzzy blurs at home resolve themselves into glittering, diamond-studded forms. One, the flying V-shaped Electric Guitar Cluster, really does look like something Orion might pluck out of the sky and start strumming. Ghostly nebulae float into view, looking fragile enough to dissipate in the warm breeze. And the moon reveals detail like I've never seen before, with mountains and craters visible in three-dimensional detail, so sharp and so close that I expect to see Neil Armstrong bound into view.

Light from the moon and a nearby restaurant threaten to drown out the faint, wispy objects we're trying to see, but Wayne is armed with an infrared filter that gives the objects a green night-vision goggle cast, but brings out details that normally would be invisible this light-polluted night.

Hawaii is a magnet for professional astronomers, but we're hardly in a professional setting. We're at the Hapuna Prince Hotel, one of two Kohala Coast resorts where Star Gaze Hawaii conducts programs. (The Mauna Kea Beach Hotel is the other.) It's not exactly a professional setting, but then, we're not exactly professionals. I worry that the presentation will be too technical for a novice, but as it turns out, you don't have to know the first thing about astronomy to enjoy the program. In fact, seeing Wayne and Verna enthusiastically explain concepts like nebulae, meteors, and galaxies for what must be the thousandth time, I realize that they seem to enjoy introducing newbies to the night sky at least as much as talking shop with astro-geeks.

Not that this is a low-tech operation. Keeping 20 people engaged with only two telescopes is a tough job, but with the help of technology, it moves right along. Verna is using a laptop to project night-sky photos onto a wall, making it easy for her to point out constellations as we wait our turn at the telescopes. Wayne cruises the line with a hand-held computer showing us images of what's in the viewfinder, and explaining their significance before we take a peek. The evening ends with a slideshow of time-exposure photographs of celestial objects, startling because it's hard to imagine getting a closer look at them than we had this evening.

Stargaze Hawaii is the only guided astronomy program Wayne knows of on the Big Island that takes place at sea level. To get a better view of the stars, you'd have to go where the experts go, and that's exactly where I'm headed. I'm taking my love of observational astronomy to the next level--the 9,300-foot level of Mauna Kea, to be exact.

Dark Skies, Light Head
Locals will eagerly tell you that Mauna Kea is 35,000 feet tall, making it the tallest mountain on earth. Of course, they're counting about 20,000 feet that are under water. However you count it, its true that the enormous mound of Mauna Kea (the name means White Mountain) rises steeply and dramatically up from the bottom of the ocean to a summit 13,796 feet above sea level, high above most of the atmosphere's water vapor and turbulence. In the 1960s, when scientists were scouting locations for what would eventually become the world's largest telescopes, they could find no place better suited to astronomy than Mauna Kea. Certainly there were higher mountains on earth, but none with the calm weather and dark skies found on the Big Island. (Hawaiians are serious about preventing light pollution. A testament to this is the fact that every single streetlight on the island is a sodium vapor lamp. These lamps are more expensive than conventional lighting but operate at a yellowish-orange wavelength that disrupts night vision less than white lights.)

Today, if you want to make a pilgrimage to the site of the twin Keck telescopes, the largest optical instruments on earth, you can in theory drive yourself up to the top of Mauna Kea. This isn't recommended, though, for a number of reasons. For one, the road to the top is rough and isolated, and every car-rental agency on the island specifically forbids customers from driving the summit road. Break down there, and you'll get no help from the main office. Secondly, the driving conditions are extreme. You might make it without a four-wheel drive in the summer, but the narrow, crumbling stripe of pavement that passes for Saddle Road ("Straddle Road," as some call it) isn't for the faint of heart. In the winter, snow is common. Add to that the fact that cars (like people) don't operate very efficiently at high altitudes, and you're better off paying someone else handle the driving for you.

For my trip to the Everest of astronomy, I let the Hawaii Forest & Trail (see sidebar) staff handle the hard work for me, and don't regret it. I'm picked up near the Waikoloa Beach Marriott at 4pm by the boyishly enthusiastic Greg Brown. A marine biologist by training, Greg is a bubbling fount of knowledge on seemingly every subject. Chattering nearly non-stop on the 90-minute drive, he briefs us on everything from the plate tectonics and volcanic activity that created the Islands of Hawaii to the development of ranching and agriculture that shaped its history. We learn the traditional folklore surrounding Mauna Kea and nearby Mauna Loa. At 6,500 feet, we stop for a picnic dinner near some abandoned Parker Ranch buildings, and get a lesson about the island's biggest employer. At 10,000 feet, when altitude makes conversation an effort, we're bundled out of the van for a spontaneous stop to see a rare blooming silversword plant. Finally, nearing the summit, it's time to learn something about astronomy.

In the Shadows of Giants
At the summit, the setting sun is bathing everything in warm orange hues and the sky above us is utterly clear. To the west, the sun is setting not into the ocean, but into a horizon formed by a layer of clouds below us. Opposite the sun, Mauna Kea's shadow throws an enormous triangular shadow over the clouds, tapering eerily to infinity at the eastern horizon.

The only thing tempering the awesome moment is a mild reaction to the altitude. At dinner, most of us had felt a little lightheaded and giddy, almost as if we were a little tipsy--I saw one woman in her twenties jumping in a puddle like a little girl. Now, at almost 14,000 feet, I feel hung-over. My head hurts a little, and my energy is low. When someone asks politely if I might take his picture, I consider saying no. According to Greg, this is normal, although everyone reacts differently. If you have heart and lung problems, you should probably consult a doctor before you leave home. In addition, no one should visit the top within 24 hours of scuba diving. In the short time groups stay at the summit, though, it's rare that anyone ever has a serious altitude reaction.

As the sun settles into the clouds, two things happen: The temperature of the bone-dry air plummets to around freezing, and the buildings around us crank and clank into life. Doors in domed roofs slowly slide open, and one whole building starts to rotate. Greg, the only one of the group to have any wind left in him, points out the landmarks excitedly. The summit area, which covers acres, is dotted with domes, housing 11 instruments. His most reverent tones are reserved for the twin domes housing the two Keck telescopes, the largest in the world. This temple of astronomy is what many of us came here to see. A little shiver goes down my spine when I think of the view I got a few days ago with the 11-inch telescopes owned by Star Gaze Hawaii. Each of these Keck instruments has a mirror that measures a full 10 meters across.

Tonight, though, we're not going to look through these telescopes. In fact, no one will. A lot of them, like the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, don't even collect visible light, so there's no point in trying to look through an eyepiece. And of the ones that do work in visible wavelength, most are controlled remotely. The Keck scopes, for example, are monitored by t-shirt-clad scientists 48 miles away in Kamuela. Even if we did somehow get inside a dome, observing time is far too precious for scientists to let mere mortals take even a second of it. Competition for telescope time is tight, with 3,000 applications made yearly for time on the Keck telescopes alone. It's expensive, too; Greg tells us that an evening of observing time at one summit telescope was recently auctioned on e-bay for $16,000.

This is a little disappointing, but I still have the best observing of my life ahead of me this evening, so I can't complain. We climb back into the van just after sunset, being sure to be off the summit before our van headlights can wreak any havoc with the night's observations. We descend to the Onizuka Visitor Information Station at 9,300 feet, still well above the clouds, but warmer than the summit and low enough to clear my head a little.

Red-Planet Rendezvous
As we approach the visitor center, Greg shuts off his headlights and drives very slowly using his hazards, explaining that the yellow light of the flashers, like the orange glow of the island's street lights, is less apt to spoil observers' night vision. Inside the visitor center I discover that everything, even the bathroom, is bathed in dull red light for the same reason.

Greg sets up an eight-inch telescope that he's brought and gives us an orientation talk as he works. He's also miraculously produced hot chocolate and cookies, which we munch docilely. The slight glow we can see in the west is not a relic of sunset, Greg tells us, but zodiacal light, an eerie and exotic phenomenon caused by sunlight reflecting off space dust, best seen from the tropics. The red beacon high in the sky is the planet Mars, then within weeks of its closest pass at Earth in 40,000 years. It's brighter than anything in the sky but the nearly full moon, which is so brilliant it casts shadows and nearly drowns the Milky Way.

We take turns looking at objects in Greg's telescope, but we're also free to wander over to other telescopes set up by the visitor-center staff. Greg and the other telescope operators all provide detailed explanations of what we're looking at--the Dumbbell Nebula, globular clusters, double stars, and more. Just as it did at the Hapuna Prince Hotel a few days ago, the moonlight crowds some of the dimmer objects out of the sky, and I'm slightly disappointed that I'm not getting the best views possible. But when we turn the telescope on the moon, giving it the attention it seems to be demanding, we're rewarded with a view of the satellite that's even more breathtaking than before. In the unwavering atmosphere, every crater stands out in razor-sharp detail, the sun-lit rims in relief against profound shadows. I can make out where meteors have impacted, and telltale sprays of debris even tell me which direction they came from. The level of detail is so stunning that, where earlier I had expected to catch a glimpse of Neil Armstrong, now I expect to see the outline of one of his footprints.