CityView Magazine

34 | Januar y 2020 it's the closest thing to one I've made," Horne said of the shot. Horne suspected for years that the sun would line up directly between the arches, and he tried to hunt down an existing photo of the event but without luck. Armed with a computer planetarium program, a plastic protractor and a city map, Horne figured out two dates — Nov. 11 and Jan. 29 — on which the arches would exactly frame the sunrise every year. at was 2000, and either forgetfulness or clouds ruined the shot until Nov. 11, 2005, when he first captured it. "at was the last one I shot by myself," Horne said. at photo ran that December with Horne's monthly Observer column, Backyard Universe, and made the cover of Our State magazine in 2007. It's been sold as prints and posters. e beauty of the event now attracts local photographers, both professional and amateur, every year. With the dome, the observatory stands about 19 feet, at one time high enough and exposed enough that it was quite the attraction in Stedman, drawing visitors curious about the building and the stargazing Horne was doing. In the 40 years since its completion, trees have grown up, obscuring the view of the observatory from the road. And decades of existence have taken some of the novelty out of the place as well, drawing fewer curious visitors. While the novelty might have worn off for others, the observatory and its views haven't lost a bit of appeal for Horne. "It's not old hat for me," Horne said. "It's familiar. As familiar to me as the trees and buildings people pass everyday on their way to work. But it hasn't gotten old." Horne's stargazing has taken him around the world. In 1986, he took a trip to the Australian Outback to photograph the passing of Halley's Comet, an event that occurs every 76 years. at trip, taken through Sky & Telescope magazine, eventually landed Horne a freelance gig with the magazine that's still going strong 32 years later. He's since led four group tours through the publication to see total solar eclipses — to Cabo San Lucas in 1991, to a ship off the coast of Venezuela in 1998, Zambia in 2001 and Salem, Oregon, in 2017. But Horne actually witnessed his first total solar eclipse in 1970 at age 16, and he did it from his own backyard, a reminder that there's plenty to see in the sky from home. "You see these images of galaxies and stuff, you expect that to be possible from a mountaintop observatory in the Southwest," Horne said. "It doesn't matter how many times I've done it, I'm still amazed by the reach I have from right here in Stedman."

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