Fourth of July 2023 Issue

Left to right: Glenn Burke adjusts
a telescope at the first star party at
Hopatcong High School. Christine
Munoz peers through a telescope
to get a glimpse of Venus as
Kristin Ransiear looks on.
The Sky’s the Limit for New Club
10
Story by MICHAEL DAIGLE
Photos by Karen Fucito
Venus teased, dancing against infinite
darkness as silver light from the rising,
yet unseen moon feathered the edges of the
clouds shifting across the opening sky.
Some of the 20 or so astronomy fans
gathered in the courtyard at Hopatcong High
School on a chilly June Saturday night and
peered into telescopes to frame the fluttering
Venus crescent in the tiny circles of their lenses;
others held one hand above their eyes to block
the glare of security lights that illuminated the
building. The bark of a fox broke the silence.
The group gathered to celebrate the first
star party of the Hopatcong Observatory
Astronomy Club, the dream of Hopatcong
resident Justin McCarthy, 23.
McCarthy graduated from Stevens Institute
of Technology in 2022 and works as a structural
engineer for Titan Engineering.
The party was also a celebration of the
observatory that McCarthy built in 2018 for an
Eagle Scout project while he was still in high
school.
The wooden shell, painted in Kelly green, the
school’s colors, has a roof that rolls open, walls
filled with charts, an array of technology and
a telescope trained on Polaris, the North Star.
“The telescope tracks the movement of
Polaris,” McCarthy said, while on a smartphone
he displayed the crescent image of Venus as
seen through the telescope.
Venus shows a crescent face when the sun is
between the Earth and Venus, he said.
The club is a registered 501(c)(3) and was
established to support the observatory’s
operation, upgrade the facility and fund a
scholarship program for the high school.
For McCarthy, the observatory melds two
key interests: science and engineering and
giving back to the community.
Excited by the Apollo moon landings of the
1960s, McCarthy, along with his father, Daniel
McCarthy, and his uncle, Glenn Burke, attended
LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Fourth of July 2023
the Stellafane Convention in Vermont in 2014.
He returned from the long-running
astronomy event and gathering of amateur
telescope makers inspired to create his own
observatory. He also donated an 8-inch
telescope, which was the first telescope used
in the Hopatcong facility.
“I thought it would be a neat idea,” McCarthy
said.
It also filled a need for a new observatory, he
said, since Lenape Valley Regional High School
had shuttered its facility. The next closest is
the Greenwood Observatory at Jenny Jump
State Forest in Hope, which is open April to
November. The site is operated by the United
Astronomy Clubs of New Jersey.
The availability of a local observatory was
what brought Dan Duran of Lake Hopatcong to
the star party.
Duran, an information technology engineer,
said he got hooked on astronomy in 2015 and
bought his own telescope. But between the
distance to his job out of the lake region and
the distance and part-time stature of the Jenny
Jump observatory, he was frustrated by the
lack of dark spaces to observe the universe.
The Hopatcong observatory fits that need,
he said, and he became a member of the club.
Duran’s observation is central to McCarthy’s
intent: It is not enough to just build something,
but that something should have a purpose
beyond the thing itself.
The observatory is not a project about him,
but fills a need he perceived
as a lake region kid.
“I was always interested
in astronomy,” he said, “but
growing up I realized there
was a lack of places for kids
like to me to explore.”
Thus, the club’s mission:
foster an interest in
astronomy for the local
public; host age-appropriate
events for local students; host
star parties for the general
public; minimize light pollution
in the surrounding area; and
equip the observatory with
new astronomy equipment.
And the most far-reaching
goal: establish an observatory
scholarship for Hopatcong High
School students.
The lake region saw
McCarthy’s combination of community
spirit and engineering skills in 2021 when, as
a member of a team of Stevens students, he
worked to define the conditions that were
needed to return the functionality of the
historic fountain at Hopatcong State Park.
The century-old fountain was designed as
both a public display and water-leveling device
but had deteriorated.
His comments at that time reflect his
approach to the observatory: It’s personal.
“I used to work at the park and saw how
dirty and broken the fountain was,” he said as
he took part in the project. “It’s a part of the
history here. I’ve seen the old photographs
of families enjoying the fountain. It was built
along Lakeside Boulevard so the public could
enjoy it.”
The fountain is expected to be ready for
display at its 100th anniversary in 2024, he said.
Like they did during the Stellafane
Convention years earlier, McCarthy’s father
and uncle also attended the June star party.
Burke, his uncle, brought a homemade
telescope, a lightweight spindly framed model
that was ready to assemble.
Burke and McCarthy’s father offered proud
support and admiration, as they had done
when the project was in its infancy.
The elder McCarthy, a longtime member
of the Lake Hopatcong Commission, sees
Justin McCarthy leads an astronomy lesson
for those in attendance at the first star party at
Hopatcong High School.