KITCHENER — During the night, when you’re snug in bed, Maryanne Weiler, stargazer and master gardener, sometimes throws on a coat, loads her telescope into her vehicle and heads out in search of darkness.

She’ll meet a few other hearty individuals at the appointed hour, but not many. It is, after all, winter and often the outdoor cold is enough to numb the fingers.

“They used to call me the ‘ice lady’ because I’m always out in the cold,” Weiler says.

“I wear snowmobile pants, big Kodiak boots good to -40 C, a down-filled jacket and lots of layers. I feel like the Michelin Man . . . Sometimes I wonder if I can move my foot from the gas to the brake.”

But hunting for a nebula, for star clusters and for other objects in the sky is too much fun to pass up.

When the winter sky is clear, and when there isn’t a gardening meeting that takes her elsewhere, Weiler is checking her email, looking for other amateur astronomers who will brave the cold to set up telescopes in a spot where city lights won’t interfere with the view.

“I’ve got the word out,” she says one day recently. “I got two maybes, one definite no. . . . Sometimes it’s hard to get anyone to go out with me.”

Weiler, a former teacher, has been a master gardener for 23 years and a member of the Kitchener-Waterloo Centre (or club) of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada for about seven years. She is passionate about both earth and sky.

And recently she was one of six winners in an annual astrophotography contest sponsored by the 120-member astronomy group.

Using only a “point-and-shoot” digital camera, Weiler took a photo of the moon, high above Venus, that was named the winner in the contest’s special events category. She also received an honourable mention for a more detailed photo of the moon, one she took by pointing the camera through the telescope eyepiece.

Perry Cash, Steve Holmes, David Jenkins and David Gilbank were winners as well in the fixed tripod; deep sky; lunar, planetary and solar; and eyepiece sketches categories respectively. Holmes won the prize for best overall photo for his image of Bubble Nebula NGC 7635 in the Cassiopeia constellation.

Weiler is a keen observer, says Wayne Joslin, president of the local astronomy club.

Weiler, who chairs the group’s Stargazing 101 meetings, says she admires the work of other amateur astronomers who have more sophisticated equipment and higher-level computer skills to produce “phenomenal” photos. But she is resisting getting into serious astrophotography herself because of the cost, she says.

And the club is encouraging more people to get involved, even with simple equipment.

“What you need is just an eye for what makes a good picture,” Weiler says. “I just like taking pictures. Ask me how many pictures I have of flowers and plants.”

At first blush, astronomy might seem an unusual pursuit for a master gardener whose eyes are usually focused on the ground as opposed to staring at the sky.

As master gardener, Weiler has considerable expertise in gardening and volunteers to share that knowledge with the public. She founded this area’s master gardener program, and is one of 25 master gardeners across the region.

But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense that Weiler is drawn to both gardening and astronomy. Both require research, knowledge, a love of the outdoors and determination. They even share some common terms — there’s the moonflower, for example, and red star and Andromeda plants.

“I often get planets and plants and Jupiter and junipers mixed up,” Weiler says, laughing.

Both passions present a challenge and both require patience, something she admits is not normally her strong suit. When it comes to astronomy, however, Weiler has all the time in the world, or rather, in the solar system.

“I’m not normally a patient person, but I can spend an hour just looking for an object because I know it’s there and it should be there, and why can’t I see it?”

It’s difficult to find one object in 360 degrees of sky, but she feels rewarded when she’s successful.

“The thought you are looking at something 2.5-million light years away . . . .”

Weiler joined the astronomy group in 2002 when she was at the point of retiring from her post at Rockway Gardens, where she was employed as supervisor by the Kitchener Horticultural Society for about 15 years.

Retirement, she says, meant she “could go out and stay all night long.”

Her interest in astronomy, she says, was piqued by news reports in 2003 about an upcoming “close approach” of Mars to Earth and by the unfounded rumours of a possible catastrophe.

She decided to see Mars for herself at the group’s next star party, an event at which the public is invited to look through members’ telescopes.

She later borrowed one of the society’s telescopes and set it up on a hill behind her Kitchener home, where she cultivates a beautiful garden.

“I wanted to see Saturn,” she says.

“I came running down the hill and said, ‘I found it, I found it!’ ”

A year later, after the purchase of an eight-inch Newtonian telescope, there was no keeping Weiler inside.

“Every single night it was clear enough to look, I looked . . . If you get four or five good days a month, that’s good.”

Continuing development in Weiler’s south Kitchener neighbourhood has now made it necessary for her to seek out darker skies away from home.

Until it closed two years ago, she would meet other stargazers at the society’s observatory near Ayr. Now, they get together at the Conestogo Lake Conservation Area, northwest of Elmira. And sometimes, they meet on private property with permission of the owner.

“We go anywhere we can find that’s dark.”

Even then, it can be a gamble. Weiler once left home at 2 a.m. to go to Conestogo Lake Conservation Area to see meteor showers. The sky was beautiful in Kitchener, but cloudy there. She had to turn around and go home.

Weiler records the things she has seen in the sky by colouring them in on maps of the constellations. Special lists used by stargazers help her decide what she will look for next and where to search. “You use star maps, just like road maps,” she says.

When fellow stargazers find what they’re looking for, she says, it’s common to hear the comment, “I got it,” ripple through the group. It isn’t always a breathtaking experience.

“Sometimes when you find it, you think, ‘I looked all night just for that?’”

However, it’s not the destination, but the journey that keeps Weiler coming back to the stars.

“Under the sky, it’s an experience that’s really difficult to explain,” she says. “You go out there in the dark and there’s maybe four or five other stargazers, and people are talking in whispers.

“It’s just something that happens. Partly you don’t want to disturb others. But it’s more than that. It’s like a reverence. It’s like a spiritual experience.”

 • See award-winning photographs by members of the Kitchener-Waterloo Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada online with this story. Visit www.therecord.com and click on the word “Life” in the red menu bar.

The local astronomy group — its website address is www.kw.rasc.ca — is hosting its next public star party April 24, from dusk on, in Waterloo Park.

baggerholm@therecord.com