Dr. Richard Crowe, `Imiloa Astronomer-in-Resident will introduce the film about stargazing.

"Seeing in the Dark is meant to alter, inspire and illuminate the lives of millions," said filmmaker Tim Ferris. "It introduces viewers to the rewards of the

first-person, hands on astronomy-from kids learning the constellations to amateur astronomers doing professional-grade research in discovering planets and exploding stars. I hope it will encourage many viewers to make stargazing part of their lives, and a few to get into serious amateur

astronomy."

The film features amateur astronomers ranging from casual stargazers to those who have made important scientific discoveries. Among them is Big Island resident Steven James O'Meara, who taught himself astronomy as a boy and was given keys to Harvard College Observatory when he was 14 years old.

There he observed spokes on Saturn's rings, a finding deemed impossible by many astronomers before the spokes were photographed by the Voyager space probe.

The film is in part a personal account of Ferris' life-long devotion to star-gazing, beginning with his introduction to the night sky as a teenager in Florida in the 50's. "Back then we had big skies and small telescopes," Ferris says in the film. "We couldn't observe much beyond the Moon, the

planets, and a few bright star clusters, but we had a lot of fun, and we came to cherish the telescope as an instrument of deliverance, the keys to a vast and spectacular kingdom."