Foolish for Astronomy

 There is a man in my astronomy club who has been using remote telescopes to image objects in the sky. Scopes mounted in Chile, Hawaii, Peru and Australia, in places with clear seeing and without the problems of light pollution. He has shown the club some truly spectacular images of nebulas and galaxies. Having been the president of the club along with belonging to numerous other clubs, he has the ability to accurately describe what we are seeing and his processes in getting these great shots.

    An e-mail from him arrived early in the morning on the clubs list-server. In it, he told how excited he was about a shot he had just taken.

    His post described using a telescope located in the Canary Islands named the Sloof Scope. He had managed to image a shot of the planet Saturn as it transited the sun. Clouds had hampered his short amount of time on the telescope, but he managed to get a shot just before the planet left the suns disc.

    I clicked on the picture included with the e-mail and it wouldn’t open. I tried a few times, all without any luck. I sent him an e-mail describing my problem and rather quickly got a response with another picture attached. This one opened and I was shocked at what I saw!

    It was spectacular! I could see the wisps of clouds which had hidden the sun from view and near its edge, a nice sharp silhouette of the ringed planet!

    This was the type of shot that astro-photographers dream of! This was contest winner material! This was worthy of a magazine article!

    I sent him a gushing congratulatory e-mail saying how lucky he was to have gotten it and how spectacular it was.

    After hitting send, I started wondering about it. I wondered when he had taken it. I thought he had said that morning but Saturn has been rising before the sun for a month or so. Maybe he had taken it earlier and had spent time “tweaking” the picture to make it as “perfect” as possible. Astro-photographers are known for take shots and then spending days or weeks working on correcting everything before presenting it to be seen.

    Going through a few reference books and some magazines, I found out that the sun and Saturn had been in conjunction last on February 2^nd, nearly two months ago. Running things around in my head I suddenly realized that Saturn could NEVER go in-between us and the sun! It’s orbit is too large, it is impossible! That shot could not have been taken from earth! Turning my head, I glanced at the calendar.

    It was then that I realized this man who I looked up to, a man who had taught me things about space and astronomy, a man who I consider a friend, had played me for a fool!

    It was April first…April Fool’s Day. Re-examining the e-mail I saw that he had used the “Lirpa Sloof” camera on the “Sloof” Telescope. That would be April Fools and Fools spelled backwards.

    I don’t know how many others in the club that he fooled but he had gotten me good! I fell for it without even considering that it was a joke. My enthusiasm got the best of me.

    It wasn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. He proved what I already knew, I can be a real fool when it comes to astronomy!

(A few of the "facts" have been altered for a better story line)