Earlier sunsets and clear skies in winter often provide optimum conditions to view the night sky.

The Forest Preserve District of Will County takes advantage of this with the free “AstronoMonee” program Dec. 27 at Monee Reservoir.

“Our basic goal is to find people that are interested in astronomy and give them a bit of information on what they’re seeing,” said Bob Bryerton, interpretive naturalist with the Forest Preserve District of Will County.

“We talk about how to use a star chart and how to navigate the sky so you can see everything from constellations to stars to planets to clusters or galaxies or nebula or other kind of phenomena that we can find in the sky.”

Bryerton, whose interest in astronomy started as a child trying to find constellations from his front porch, and Forest Preserve volunteer Dave Fuller, of Peotone, present the program.

“Dave’s an amateur astronomer. He’s extremely passionate about it. He has a ton of information that he gives out at all of these programs. All you have to do is find one or two bright stars. If you can find those we give you the tools to find other things from those,” said Bryerton, of Beecher.

“Because people may have gotten telescopes for Christmas, what Dave will add to the program is how to get the most out of your telescope. People may get a standard telescope and they may not be sure how to use it. He can talk about that with people.

Fuller can recommend accessories, such as what types of lenses you might want to get that would make it more useful, Bryerton said. “A standard telescope is fine but there are little things you can do to bring out images more, expand the field of view or magnify, or tweak your scope to make it work for you even better.”

Although the district has offered evening astronomy programs over the years at various locations, “AstronoMonee” has made Monee Reservoir its home for several reasons.

“We’ve settled on Monee the last two years because that seems to be the place that we get the most attendance on a regular basis. Some of the other sites are hard to find or hard for people to get to. This is a relatively central location with relatively dark skies,” Bryerton said.

“We’ve also got the Visitors Center so we can schedule the program far in advance, not knowing what the weather will be and not knowing for sure if it’s going to be great or not to see stuff. There’s an indoor component with each session.”

“AstronoMonee,” which starts indoors at the Visitor Center and has telescopes and binoculars available for use, takes place rain or shine.

“Dress for the weather. If it is nice enough to be outside, if we can see things and if it’s clear we’ll try to go outside and stay on the telescope for a while. If it’s cloudy and there’s no point to be out there to see anything, then a more detailed program will be inside,” Bryerton said.

“If for some reason the weather is cloudy and we don’t get to see stars you’re still going to come away with new knowledge. You’re going to gain a lot of knowledge on how to use a star chart and what you’re looking at so when you look at the sky you’ll be able to identify stuff.”

Jessi Virtusio is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.