Stargazing with Mr. Weeks

When the sky is clear and the weather is nice, you can expect to see Mr. Weeks standing outside looking through a tube at the sky. This is because near the end of his highschool years he took a shine to stars and space. During the past 37 years he has looked up at the sky with or without a telescope in wonder and amazement. Around three years ago, he decided to spread this experience to his students and invited them to look through his scope on nights that allowed for it.

When I asked him what made him want to do this, he thought for a moment and said that he noticed “no one gets the opportunity” to really look at the sky in the high definition and zoom that his scope allows for.

So because of this, he has decided that once or twice a month, weather permitting, he would invite students to join him late after school for about two hours and look at the screen his telescope outputs on and see amazing things in the sky. For example, he said that you “can see the rings and moons of Saturn” through his scope.

While we were talking about this, he told me his current favorite story about these “viewing sessions.” His favorite story is how on one evening in the late spring around 11pm, he was with some students looking up at the stars. The night cleaning crew was not informed of this and showed up at their normal time to do their jobs as usual. One of them noticed there were people outside on school grounds, which is not allowed, and told his supervisor. The cleaning crew then came outside and started to yell at Mr. Weeks which gave him a fright until everyone realized who he was and why he was there. After everything settled, everyone had a laugh and relaxed.

While I have never personally been to one of these sessions, I have only heard good things about them. The air there is one of “come and go as you please.” There are no lines for seeing through the scope because there is a screen that shows what the scope is pointed at and everyone can see it at the same time. There are typically only 4-6 students that show up to these, but Mr. Weeks wants that number to go up. If you would like to be put on a list that will email you whenever he is doing one of these sessions, email Mr. Weeks at andrewweeks@g.lickingvalley.k12.oh.us and he will gladly put you on the list.

Currently Mr. Weeks has no plans on stopping these sessions and plans on doing them as often as he can in the future.