Prairie Night Sky Viewing

Though Willa Cather is known for her discerning taste in the arts and her gifted language in her work, she was also a student and keen observer of the natural world, writing frequently of her surroundings—the beautiful plants and trees, the vagaries of weather, the wonder of a night sky. Please join us at the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie at 6:30 p.m. (with dinner ticket) or 9:00 p.m. (night sky viewing only) as we host the Platte Valley Astronomical Observers for a night of sky viewing at the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie.

Feel free to bring your lawn chairs. In case of clouds or inclement weather, an alternate date will be announced.

"One hour from now, out of your window, I shall see a sight unparalleled—Jupiter and Venus both shining in the golden-rosy sky and both in the West; she not very far above the horizon, and he about mid-way between the zenith and the silvery lady planet. . . . they are of a superb splendor—deepening in color every second, in a still-daylight-sky guiltless of other stars, the moon not up and the sun gone down behind Gap-mountain; those two alone in the whole vault of heaven. . . . I can't but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures. If they are not, then we are the only wonderful things—because we can wonder." ~ Willa Cather's 1936 letter to Edith Lewis