Back in the early 70s, when Dan Troiani’s wife, Kathy, was still just his girlfriend, she dragged him to Adler Planetarium. Troiani had lived in Chicago all his life but had never been to Adler, or to a sky show anywhere else. A science-shy film major at Columbia College, his interest in space was limited to episodes of Star Trek. But that day, when the dome went dark and the sky turned on, Troiani turned on too–sparked by talk of quasars and black holes and Voyager missions. Soon he was joining astronomical societies, dropping by Fermilab for lectures, and staying up all night. He was particularly obsessed with the red planet.
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Kathy married him anyway and got used to his new hobby. Still, when he climbed out of bed at 3 AM on December 19, 1979, and trudged into the bitter night, she told him he was crazy. Mars was making one of its cyclical near approaches to earth (they happen every 26 months), and Troiani, alone in the backyard of his Chicago bungalow, trained his telescope on the shimmering disk. He was rewarded with a gloriously clear image of the planetary face, an eyeball-sized world, 50 million miles away. Pressed to the scope, he scrutinized the familiar markings, then noticed something that gave him a little jolt. There was a small gray slash across the northern polar ice cap of the planet. “I knew there were rifts on the south cap,” Troiani says, “but I never knew there was a rift on the north cap.” Mystified, he sent his observations to the Association of Lunar & Planetary Observers (ALPO). Two weeks later he got an excited call back. “This rift I had rediscovered was first seen in the 1890s,” he says. “They called it the Rima Tenus back then. No one had seen it since.” His discovery was written up and verified, and before long he was a celebrity in certain circles.
If conditions are right, earthlings will get their best look at Mars since 1990 this Saturday. Troiani will conduct a special Skywatch program in the center’s 150-seat domed theater at 7:30 that night, followed (if weather permits) by telescope viewing. Tickets are $5. The Cernan Earth and Space Center is located at Triton College, 2000 Fifth Avenue in River Grove. Call 708-583-3100 for information on the Skywatch and the center’s regular schedule of planetarium and laser light shows.
