It was a snowy, starless night April 7 at Bear Creek Lake State Park, but a group of more than 20 people still gained insights into the heavens via an engaging indoor multimedia presentation from Crewe Astronomy Club founder Kim Kenny at Bear Creek Hall.

“The biggest thing we want to do is get kids interested in astronomy,” Kenny said of the club’s mission after the event concluded.

He noted that a lot of people show up at the club’s presentations for curiosity, but basically, the target audience is young children.

“We work with not only five state parks, five shows in the fall and in the spring, but we also do (shows for) Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, home-schoolers and church groups,” he said. “And I have over 30 programs that I’ve written.”

Kenny cited that the club started with him and his wife back in 1998, and Keith Johnson has been a consistent part of it since 1999.

“We’d had a few people extra come and go over the years, but they moved away and things, but it’s always been me, my wife, Margaret, and Keith Johnson,” Kenny said.

The club has had an impressive impact, drawing interest in the region but also gaining notice from some at the national level.

One of Kenny’s presentations focuses on the role women have played in scientific endeavors, and he received permission from the History Channel to feature something it had aired — an explanation by Dr. Amy Mainzer of how to create a comet in a lab.

Mainzer works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and has appeared a variety of times on the History Channel.

“She picked up on what we were doing,” Kenny said, “and she wrote me a nice letter — said, ‘Thank you so much.’”

The club has also proven to be a boon to telescope retailers and manufacturers.

“We’ve probably helped Orion (Telescopes & Binoculars), I guess, and Celestron and some of the others, … sell about 300 telescopes over the years, because people will take our number, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, can I call you if I have a question?’” Kenny said.

He noted that the ability for the club to help out would-be telescope owners has been key because shoppers do not want to spend a few hundred dollars and then run into roadblocks on getting good usage out of their investment.

After educating people on deep-sky objects and more during his presentation April 7, Kenny gave extensive guidance on telescope and binocular options available.

“I wish we could have been outside because there’s nothing better (than) to see a kid get real excited,” he said. “… I’ve had kids break down and just cry, and other kids will look up and say, ‘Alright, where is it?’”

Kenny indicated he would reply, “Where’s what?” Then he said the children would say, “‘You’ve got some little thing in here that’s projecting an image or something’s hanging down in front of the scope,’ not realizing they’re actually seeing Saturn up in the night sky up in the solar system.”

This is the ninth year the club has held events at Bear Creek Lake State Park, Kenny said.

Among those in attendance in Bear Creek Hall on April 7 was Gabriel Rodriguez, a senior at Clover Hill High School in Chesterfield County who was camping in the park for the weekend.

“I thought the presentation was really nice,” he said. “I got to see kind of a little bit more about astronomy that I didn’t actually know, so that was really interesting (as was) getting to learn about the different types of telescopes and what the different parts do.”

Cameron Carlson, a home-schooler from out of town who was also camping at the park, asked a couple of questions during the event and cited afterward that the presentation had expanded his horizons.

“I didn’t know hardly anything about constellations,” he said. “I learned a lot about constellations.”

Kenny likened astronomy to a musical instrument.

“If you start playing the piano or guitar when you’re 5 years old, you’ll be a pro by the time you’re in your later teens or 20s if you keep at it,” he said. “But you can start it any time and have just as much fun.”

He said the goal of the presentation he gave April 7 was to show people “about 20 places you can look at real quickly and go, ‘Wow!’”

He noted wanting to help people “realize that the entire universe is really in their backyard every night. You’ve just got to know where and when to look.”