But the only obvious revolutions were the heads of the visitors spinning in amazement at what they were seeing through the lenses of more than a half-dozen powerful telescopes brought to the nature preserve by members of the Astronomy Club of Tulsa.

Rick Walker, a member of the club who also does a similar event each month at Hideaway Pizza in Broken Arrow as the BA Sidewalk Astronomer, brought his Moon Killer telescope to Friday’s gathering.

“This event is a lot of fun because it’s a little bit out of the city limits, so it lends to darker sky, … which allows for objects that are fainter,” he said.

Walker said the crowd — the size for this year’s event was not yet determined but was estimated at 400 people last year — includes people who stumble upon it while coming to the Keystone Ancient Forest to hike and those who perhaps have their own telescopes and are interested in astronomy.

“But we also get people that have a telescope that they’ve never figured out how to use, and we’ll take the time to show them how to use it,” he said. “We try to do that more at the sidewalk events,” which are less busy, “because once we get going here, it can be nonstop.”

Walker said astronomy buffs often don’t realize what an impact they can have by taking part in such events. He recalled a college student who had attended his sidewalk events for about six months and then announced that he was changing his major to astronomy.

“We’re looking for the kid that goes, ‘Wow!’ and wants to get into it — whether they pick it as a career or as a hobby.”

Jerry Cassity’s telescope wasn’t the biggest one on hand Friday night, but it was one of the best for seeing deep-sky objects.

He, too, likes the human interaction element to events such as Astronomy Night.

“You get a lot of people that have never looked through a telescope, and they get to see stuff. That’s kind of my favorite part — to hear people say, ‘Wow!’

“I think it lets people know what they’re missing. How many people have ever seen the Milky Way or Saturn? They see pictures all the time, but there’s just something special about seeing it with your own eye.”

One year at the eight-day Okie Tex Star Party, held each year near the Black Mesa in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Cassity was able to identify galaxies that are 307 million and 323 million light years away.

This spurred a dizzying conversation about space, time and space-time, but the upshot, perhaps, is that astronomers are also historians in a way.

“The galaxies are so far away,” Cassity said. “When you’re looking at a galaxy that far away, you’re looking back in time.”

Don Sailing looks back in time — a little ways, at least — every time he shares his love of the cosmos with others.

Growing up in Tulsa with virtually no formal training, he would take his telescope outside and point it at stars.

“I pointed it at the planet Saturn by accident,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was. I looked at it, and it was magnificent. I could see the rings. And I just jumped up, bumped the scope, and I never found it (Saturn) again until I was an adult and knew how to locate it.

“But if I had known about clubs and people and knew where there was outreach, I could have had a much better experience as a kid,” he said. “And that’s what I like to try to do.”

Sailing has been looking through his telescope for some 60 years, but events like this make the experience new all over again, he said.

“You’ve seen it all, but when you show it to other people and you see the looks on their faces, it reminds me of the first time I got to see it, and you just relive the experience,” he said.

Eileen Bader of Broken Arrow has been teaching chemistry for six years but only recently got into studying the stars.

“I’m a private tutor, and I was tutoring some elementary students, and we just finished our astronomy unit, and so that coincides perfectly with coming out here to be able to see the stars and moon and other things,” she said.

Bader attended Astronomy Night this year with her friend Amber Neasby of Bixby, who attended the gathering last year for the first time.

Neasby said she brings friends and makes a night of it.

“We go and we hike and then come and look at worlds we’ll probably never go to — and then go and hike in the dark and listen for birds,” she said.

“We’ll be here every year. It’s just really cool.”