When Jane and I first booked this adventure in April 2017, the Viking Spirit was identified as our vessel. The Spirit was still under construction at the time. When the ship was christened, Astronaut Anna Fisher (“the first mother in space”) named the ship Orion.
We had dinner with Dr. Fisher at Spacefest in July. She told me then that the Orion was a great ship, and that it had a planetarium! This was going to be an interesting voyage for sure.
The Ship
When we boarded Orion on August 19, I immediately checked out the Explorers Lounge, on Decks 7 and 8 forward.
There’s an amazing library of books on astronomy and space exploration. (And now including the three books I wrote, he said humbly.) The two halves of the Lounge’s library flank the entrance to the planetarium.
This is a rather small facility as planetariums go, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in state-of-the-art equipment. Shows are in 7K resolution, and there are three 3-D science and nature films that show in rotation throughout the trip.
Time Magazine named the Orion’s Explorers Dome as one of the top 100 best places in the world in 2018!
The bar mirror in Paps the Explorer’s Bar on deck 7 boasts a lighted star map.
The wood paneled entrance to the lounge also has inlaid lights representing stars and deep space objects. It’s gorgeous!
The walls throughout the lounge are bedecked with photos from the Apollo missions.
Astronomy
When we got on board, I also learned that the ship has a Resident Astronomer: John Maclean, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. We struck up a friendship very quickly.
John’s role is to provide enrichment experiences for the guests on the ship. This has included talks on subjects such as the Apollo program. the history of astronomy, how the Vikings navigated, the exploration of the solar system, among others. These have been delivered to eager crowds in the ship’s Star Theatre, the primary gathering place on the ship.
John has also hosted a number of observation sessions on the sports deck of the ship. The first was when we were docked in Haifa on August 22. The ship has a massive, 150mm (6”) refractor telescope with a top-notch focuser and a high-performance mount. I would be thrilled to have an instrument this good for my astrophotography at home! However, the technology is a bit of overkill in this situation. The low clouds and haze of the eastern Mediterranean sky were not conducive to looking at much other than Mars that evening.
John was going to try a solar observation on the day we were transiting the Suez Canal, but the intense heat of the Egyptian sun made the telescope too hot to handle, even when it was under a canopy!
We tried a naked-eye and binocular-assisted observing session several days later, when the ship was on the Red Sea. (Viking provides a pair of binoculars in every stateroom!) Even though we couldn’t completely turn off the lights on the upper deck of the ship, the Milky Way was readily apparent.
We’re working our way farther south. Back at home, Mars and Saturn and the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius are very low in the southern sky. Here, south of the Tropic of Cancer, I have to crane my neck to look up at them.
We had another observing session this evening. As we enter the Laccadive Sea, we’ll be at only 5° North latitude when we arrive at Colombo, Sri Lanka tomorrow. (Greensboro is at 36° N.) When we get to Singapore next week, we’ll be within shouting distance of the equator. I used the inclinometer on my phone and noticed that Saturn and Mars were both more than 50° above the horizon this evening! Both planets are far south as seen from the US at the moment. John had an appreciative crowd of about 40 people up on the deck tonight.
The Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri are unfortunately not going to be in the night sky this time of year. I’ve glimpsed them both from Grenada. I am hoping that if the weather holds up, we might be able to see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. These two irregular galaxies—companions of the Milky Way—are only visible from the equator into the Southern Hemisphere. They should be just above the southern horizon in the early morning hours. Haze may prevent me from seeing them, but I’m going to give it a shot for sure!
So I have really missed being out with my telescope for the past month. However, it’s been a blast hanging out with John Maclean and seeing so many people on this cruise who are interested in astronomy and space exploration.