Hercules Cluster (Provided photo — David Craig)

KEENE — With the comet NEOWISE being so accessible in July — people able to see it without a telescope or binoculars — many people in the Adirondack Park have been looking to the night sky for entertainment.

It’s an activity seemingly made for the coronavirus pandemic, since people can do it easily while social distancing. Plus, there are plenty of areas within the Blue Line with little or no light pollution.

Yet NEOWISE was only one celestial body people can see in the night sky this summer. This time of year, the annual Perseid meteor showers are a popular attraction for getting people outside in the middle of the night. They peaked on Aug. 11-12, but they can still be seen as of this printing.

With all the night sky excitement going on, the Lake Placid News checked in with Keene stargazer David Craig, who is widely known for inviting people to watch the stars and other objects at the Norton Cemetery off Route 9N in Keene. He spoke with the LPN by phone on Monday, Aug. 10.

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Comet NEOWISE (Provided photo — David Craig)

LPN: How has this summer been for stargazers like yourself?

DC: It’s been weird because of the COVID. Typically I go up to the local cemetery and do my stargazing, and I invite my neighbors to come out, but I can’t really do that this year.

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LPN: So you’re out there by yourself? Do any family members join you?

DC: Well, I’m not by myself. It turns out that all the excitement over this comet NEOWISE, which just went by, was enough to draw people out anyway, even though I didn’t tell them I was going to be up there. There were other people up at the cemetery taking their own pictures. And there’s another local astronomer who I often meet up there. So there were actually quite a few people up there this summer looking at that comet and other things.

Keene stargazer David Craig looks toward the night sky. (Provided photo — David Craig)

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LPN: Let’s talk about NEOWISE. How was that experience for you?

DC: Oh, it was fantastic. I really enjoyed meeting the people up there, and the comet itself was a real treat. We had a comet earlier in the spring. It was comet ATLAS, and it was great, too. … But NEOWISE you could see with your naked eye, and we just don’t see that very often so there was a lot of excitement.

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LPN: I imagine you got some good photos of NEOWISE and you tried to get it in different places?

Swan Nebula (Provided photo — David Craig)

DC: A few weeks before that, NEOWISE was actually a morning object. … One morning, I got up at 4 … and drove around trying to find a place with a view low to the northeastern horizon. And it’s tough to find that around here with all the mountains. So I didn’t have much luck, and pretty much it messed up that day because I’m not a morning person.

But after the comet swung around the sun and it started coming back, then it became an early evening object and it was in the northwest sky. Again, it started out low, and we had the same issue with the mountains and trying to find a clear view.

So I went to the Adirondack Loj Road because that had a view to the northwest and fairly low, and that’s where I saw it for the first time in the evening sky. It actually was a nice shot because it was right over Lake Placid, and I got a picture with the comet and the ski jumps in the same shot.

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LPN: I got the same shot, but I noticed trying to look at it there, there was a lot of light pollution.

DC: Yes, and it definitely came out in my image. It’s a problem, and I knew it would be a problem, too. That direction looking at the comet just looks right over the village of Lake Placid, so there’s no getting around it. But it was really the only convenient spot that wasn’t too far a drive for me. And, in the end, it actually made a nice picture.

Subsequent to that, the comet was rising in the sky pretty quickly. It rose 2 degrees per night. … And then I went to my favorite spot at Norton Cemetery.

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LPN: So what’s happening right now? We have meteor showers?

DC: We have the Perseids meteor showers coming up this week. They’re going to peak between Aug. 11th and Aug. 12th. But these meteors typically span plus or minus a week. …

Jupiter is well positioned, too, right now. In fact, I’m going up there this evening. It should be a good night. The great red spot is going to be facing toward Earth tonight, and there will be a shadow of Europa falling on the cloud tops of Jupiter.

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LPN: Where can people go to learn more about the night sky?

DC: There are tons of websites, but what I really like is a program you can download for your computer. It’s called Stellarium, at stellarium.org. … It’s planetarium software, and it will give you a picture of what’s going to be in the night sky no matter where you are and anytime you care to know.

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LPN: Will people still be able to see the meteor showers later in the week?

DC: Yes. The frequency of the meteors will start to drop off after the 11th and the 12th, but still it should be a good show and definitely worth going out.

It also might be a little better later in the week because of the moon. The moon is out now, but it doesn’t rise until I think around 11:30 tonight. Then with each night, it will rise a little bit later. … So the best time to watch these meteors is about 2 to 3 o’clock in the morning, but the moon will be out then. So right now, probably after 10 o’clock until the moon rises is a good time.

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LPN: I’ve heard people can watch the International Space Station.

DC: Yup. NASA has a website. It’s called Spot the Station (https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/), and you can sign up to get alerts when the space station is going to come by your area. … You just go out and look for it. It’s really bright, hard to miss. … It looks like a very bright star that’s moving, or maybe an airplane except it doesn’t blink.

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LPN: What about the Milky Way?

DC: I love the Milky Way. One of the great things about being up here in the Adirondacks with our beautiful dark sky and relatively low light pollution is that you can go out and see the Milky Way. You just cannot see that from the city. … But here in the Adirondacks, you just go out in the night and there it is.

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LPN: Talk to us about light pollution.

DC: Things are getting worse, and they’re probably not going to get better, so I like to make people aware of light pollution issues. That’s one of my motivations for doing this.

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LPN: At the cemetery, it seems like a community of average folks out there.

DC: I really love that aspect of it. After I got my first decent telescope and started going out there, I got lonely pretty quick. So I started making announcements on social media telling people in town that I was going to be up there. And people would come up, and I would let them look through my telescope and we’d talk about all the things we were seeing. … I like that almost as much as, maybe more than, looking through the telescope. It’s much more fun when you can share it with somebody.

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Listen to a portion of this interview on the “We are Lake Placid” podcast: https://www.lakeplacidnews.com/news/local-news/2020/08/14/we-are-lake-placid-podcast-david-craig-keene-stargazer/.