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JAMESTOWN — Every Friday night, when our star-studded sky looks as clear as blown glass, they come across Lake Katherine at GTCC toward the Cline Observatory.

Sometimes, it’s a handful. Sometimes, it’s as many as 100. They come to see the moon, Saturn or that bright thing just over the horizon. And they come with questions, so many questions.

Tom English hears them all. He teaches astronomy at GTCC, and on many Friday nights, he becomes the chief sky detective as the gazers try to decipher what’s happening millions of light years above their heads.

It gets busy every fall. Weather fronts move through, scrub the sky and leave a swimming pool of stars and planets above us.

Plus, it’s the International Year of Astronomy, 2009, the 400th anniversary of the year Italian astronomer Galileo turned a plaything into a scientific instrument and saw the stars through a telescope.

So, people come to experience their own “Galileo moment.’’ They peer into GTCC’s humongous telescope, housed in a rotating dome — the only one of its kind at any North Carolina community college — and pepper English with questions.

“How far away is that?’’

“How wide is that crater?’’

“Can you see the American flag on the moon?’’

“Where are the rings? I want to see Saturn’s rings!’’

And so it goes on Friday nights, the time when the Cline Observatory opens to everyone.

The questions. And the moments of discovery.

“Kids are the best,’’ says English, 49. “You’ll get a 5- or 6-year-old and I’ll ask, 'Do you see Saturn?’ And they’ll say, 'Yeah.’ You see, they’re not good liars. Then, I’ll tell them, 'Look again’ and then it’s 'Aaaaaaaah. I see it! I see it!’

“They’re just blown away by what they see. I had a guy once tell me, 'You got a sticker in there,’ because it looks so small and shimmery. It’s really cool.’’

English discovered that excitement while growing up in Archdale, off N.C. 62, in a neighborhood where everyone called him Tommy.

He first got into dinosaurs. But around the second grade, thanks to the Apollo space missions, he got into stars. His mom used to take him to the High Point Public Library and he would check out stacks of books on astronomy.

First, he star-gazed with binoculars. Then, he star-gazed with a telescope. Always from a three-acre field in his backyard.

He looked up. He still looks up. He tells his GTCC students to look up. And they listen.

“You know, Tom,’’ students have told him, “I never looked up until I took your class.’’

That means everything to English. He knows he’s working in a science some see as quaint and archaic. We don’t rely on the sky anymore. We don’t need to. We have laptops, GPS systems, you name it, to get us from here to there.

His students at GTCC ask him about the relevance of astronomy all the time. And every time, he becomes a storyteller. He talks of a time when the sky was our television, when sea monsters and gods battled above our heads.

He talks of astronomy being the cultural connection to our past and an analytical way into our future, where we ask questions, dig for answers and seek scientific clarity over what, at first, seems magical.

So, he tells his students and the many Galileos he sees on a Friday night, we need to look up.

“Space,’’ English says, “is a lot bigger than what most people think. You can’t travel faster than light no matter how many 'Star Trek’ episodes you’ve watched.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com