Watching the skies: Carthage native uses hand-built observatory to view night sky

When Dr. Chad Wagoner finds himself outside after dark, he always glances up into the night sky. 

Most of the time he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. It’s simply a reflexive action adopted after becoming fascinated as a child with those thousands of twinkling lights.

“When I take the trash out… I almost trip over my feet because I’m looking up most of the time,” he said with a light chuckle.

But his behavior is understandable, considering Wagoner is probably one of the area’s most experienced amateur astronomers. 

Although the night sky has captivated humankind for thousands of years, much of what held them in awe was inaccessible to the naked eye until recent telescopic advances. 

Today, men and women like Wagoner enjoy waking up at ungodly hours to silently enjoy the majesty of the night sky and the plethora of objects found within it — planets, comets, a distant nebulae or even an entire galaxy. 

Backyard astronomy, Wagoner said, “is a blossoming art. The optics we now have available to us in the amateur field today is light years ahead of what we had 20 to 30 years ago.”

The majestic sights Wagoner commonly spies through his scope are rarely seen by a majority of humans. Take Jupiter, for instance. Most folks have “seen” Jupiter as a tiny blip on the western horizon, as a special effect in a science-fiction movie or a colored photo in the pages of a book. Yet Wagoner can go out any night of the week, focus his telescope on the system’s largest planet and see it as it exists right then and there.

“I love the hunt… trying to find something, and the thrill of finally finding it and pulling it in” with the scope. “And I take a few minutes to sit back and reflect on how miniscule we are in the world and universe,” Wagoner said.

The family medicine practitioner fell in love with the night sky as a kid. But it didn’t become a full-fledged hobby until his residency training in family medicine. He purchased a professional telescope but, living in St. Louis at the time, the light pollution hovering over the city like a shield greatly dimmed his celestial view.

Only when he took up residence in Colorado Springs did he see things that he’d never seen before, thanks in large part to the city’s elevation, the absence of humidity, and an astronomy club he joined whose members did all they could to help him ‘learn the ropes.’

“I was a little nervous because I figured these guys would be a lot smarter than I was when it came to this stuff. But the guys there were great — it was a very collegial environment, everyone sharing, showing off eyepieces, their views and I really enjoyed all three of my years down there.”

When he moved back to his native Carthage, Wagoner wanted to build a permanent home for his telescope — a Meade LS200 scope with an 8-inch lens, considered the ‘workhorse’ for amateur astronomers. 

“It’s large enough to see the deep stuff but small enough to be affordable,” he said.

But it wasn’t the type of scope he could just wheel in and out of the nearby garage any time he pleased. It needed a permanent home. 

So he and his dad teamed up and built a mount for the telescope — weighed down by 40 bags of concrete — with the scope itself surrounded by a Skyshed pod (observatory), which is large enough for Wagoner to comfortably sit inside with laptop and other vital equipment.

“What’s interesting about this is that it involved three generations — my grandfather’s spirit was here because we used his cement mixer; my dad was the engineer, welding and building, and myself, who was basically manual labor.”

Through the powerful eyepiece, he’s managed to eyeball the rings of Saturn; Jupiter’s Great Red Spot; Comet Lulin; the planet Mars on a close approach to Earth in 2003; the Whirlpool and Sombrero galaxies; the star Vega and Wagoner’s absolute favorite celestial sight — the great Orion Nebula.

“I love it, and I can’t spend enough time looking at it,” he said. “You can see it with binoculars, but when everything is set up with a scope, (the view) is pretty awe-inspiring.”

To help others see such mouth-dropping objects millions of light years away from Earth, Wagoner has created The Carthage Astronomical Observing Society (CAOS), a group dedicated to gathering amateur astronomers and the public together in Southwest Missouri to enjoy the area’s “wonderfully-dark” skies.

“I think there’s a lot more interest in astronomy in the community than people are aware of,” Wagoner said. “There are beautiful skies above us (and) around us, here in Missouri… we just have to go outside and take a look.”