Photos: Gazing at the heavens over the New York City skyline in the Meadowlands

Stargazing in the MeadowlandsThe William D. McDowell Observatory's 20-inch telescope is contained within a six-meter retractable metal dome.

The observatory is open to the public on Monday and Wednesday evening from 9 to 10:30 p.m.

LYNDHURST — The William D. McDowell Observatory sits between Newark International Airport and the 24-hour incandescent hum of the City That Never Sleeps and, light pollution be damned, it's among the best places in New Jersey to gaze at the heavens.

The observatory, located at DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst, is operated by Ramapo College on the campus of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, where it's open to the public Monday and Wednesday nights.

"This year, Saturn is really great," says JJ Rusher, an educator at the Meadowlands Environment Center. "The rings are tilted about 18 degrees toward the Earth, so that makes it look great through the telescope. You can see the structure of the rings really well."

On a recent evening, more than a dozen people huddled around the telescope inside the center's six-meter retractable dome, where Rusher and the observatory's director, John Sloan, were guiding their eyes toward Saturn, Venus and the Double Double, a quadruple star system located some 162 light years away in the constellation Lyra.

Computer software gives the two a map of the New Jersey night sky, and the click of a button sends the telescope whirring in the direction of the next celestial body. As Sloan fields questions, the curvature of the metal dome hurls sounds like a ventriloquist from one end to the other, delivering the voice of someone on the other side of the room right into your ear.

"There's no secrets in the dome," Rusher says.

Opened in 2007, the 20-inch mirror telescope offers a rare perspective on the heavens from one of the most densely populated areas in the United States. In addition to their public viewing nights, they host special events and occasionally use the telescope to observe special phenomena. Rusher has also captured some breathtaking images practicing astrophotography through its viewfinder. (See a few of them here.)

Of course, stargazing has its challenges when you're standing in one of the most electrified areas of the known universe, and the observatory has to contend with passing planes that cross the horizon in 90-second intervals, on top of the periodic flash of lights from MetLife Stadium or the Izod Center, not to mention the constant glow of New York City.

Then there's the fact that McDowell doesn't sit high upon a mountain, but down in the swamp, just 25 feet above sea level, where clouds rolling off Newark Bay or the Hackensack River can obscure the field of view.

Stargazing in the MeadowlandsMeadowlands Environment Center educator JJ Rusher peers through the telescope at the William D. McDowell Observatory. 

But the Meadowlands observatory isn't a research facility; it's an education center, and while light pollution filters are needed to stare into the deep recesses of space in these parts, they're not as important to see the celestial bodies most people are interested in finding.

"When we're looking at bright objects it's not that big a deal, believe it or not," Rusher says — planets, stars and star clusters are all visible to New Jerseyans despite our efforts to convince ourselves we're the center of the universe.

It's also got another advantage as an educational resource: There are a lot of people here in northern New Jersey, as you may have noticed.

"The observatory, where it is, is a unique resource for members of the community here in the area," Sloan says. "For a lot of folks, if we were a distance away, even in western New Jersey, how many parents would be bringing their children?"

The observatory is open to all ages, and the environment center offers educational programming for everybody from kids to senior citizens. But the planets seem most popular among the schoolchildren who visit and, seeing the images from their textbooks writ large across the night sky, leave wide-eyed in wonder.

"Hopefully one of those children will get inspired enough to one day pursue a career in it," Sloan says. "And if nothing else, at least they have the experience of, 'Wow, I saw Saturn.'"

This reporter, ostensibly a grown man, saw Saturn through that telescope on a recent evening. My reaction, basically, was: "Wow, I saw Saturn."

The William D. McDowell Observatory at the Meadowlands Environment Center is open to the public Monday and Wednesday from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. For more information, visit their website.