STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Turn your eye to the sky while learning about the constellations of summer when the Hailey Public Library presents a free talk on Sun Valley’s dark skies at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 6.

The talk will feature Bellevue astronomer Tim Frazier, who will explain how to identify summer constellations and tell their history and stories.

The talk will focus on star clusters and nebulae that are visible in amateur telescopes and binoculars—the audience is welcome to bring their scopes.

Did you know, for instance, that you can see night-shining clouds that are not weather clouds but rather mysterious night-glowing clouds during summer months? They are so high that they are illuminated by sunlight in the middle of the night in the north part of the sky.

“Our dark skies are a treasure. And the things we learn to identify will in time become like old friends who return to visit each summer,” said Kristin fletcher, the library’s program specialist.

Frazier, has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, which led to him publishing papers on eclipsing binary. He also has an MFA from the University of Florida and has worked in more than a dozen international collections, including those at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

When his eyes are not trained on art, they’re trained on the sky—a passion that crowned him as president of the Magic Valley Astronomical Society until just recently. Frazier was the faculty sponsor for a NASA-funded, high-altitude balloon project for six years, which launched experiments and cameras to altitudes in excess of 90,000 feet.

In 2009 he headed a team from Idaho State University that built an experimental capsule that was launched into space by NASA.