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BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Hobbies are a way for humans to find excitement and entertainment in the world. For Robert Wilmore, he finds that enjoyment through the love of space.
The nicknamed group “Space Time with Robert” has met up in several locations throughout Whatcom County in order to practice stargazing. Wilmore started the group as a way to connect with people through his interest in celestial bodies.
“I don’t want to make friends by going to bars and clubbing. I did do that. It was fun, but I just felt like I wasn’t connecting with people on the level that I wanted to connect with them on,” he said. “I started to bring my telescopes out to parks and just see who would want to have a look.”
Wilmore has continued to show up at local parks to do exactly that since 2017. The event quickly grew in popularity and expanded from monthly meetings to weekly sessions using Wilmore’s telescopes and collective interest in the topic of space.
Space Time with Robert moved from its primary meeting spot at Taylor Dock near Fairhaven to Zuanich Point Park after too many people consistently started showing up on the Sunday evenings. People started coming with their own telescopes to share with attendants, something that Wilmore didn’t expect but was delighted to see.
As for what they look at through their telescopes, they gaze at everything under the sun.
Wilmore says there are challenges to deep sky object-viewing in our region or stargazing in general. Deep sky objects mean items mostly outside the solar system, and can be as far away as other galaxies.
“I think our weather and our longer nights just make the things that you see more enticing, more fleeting, something more challenging to go for, and so it makes these moments even more special than it would be for someone in Arizona or New Mexico who [just] is blessed with clear skies near the equator that can see everything,” he said.
Wilmore appreciates that we experience long periods of light and dark this far north. The long summer days provide ample time to look at the sun, while the long nights give time for some unique opportunities.
On Nov. 11, Wilmore says we will be able to see Saturn for a total of 14 hours after the sun sets, allowing him and others to view the planet as it traverses the sky through the whole night. He will use the opportunity to capture a planetary timelapse, where a series of photographs will be taken over time to create a video that shows the planet’s rotation.
“Saturn, sure enough, has about a 10–and–a–half–hour day, and so if you have 14 hours to observe Saturn, then that means you should be able to observe one full day’s worth of rotation on Saturn,” Wilmore said. “How cool is that?”
Wilmore’s love of space wasn’t a lifelong interest, but he came to the subject by some ironic means.
“Funny enough, I used to be a big moon hoax theorist in my early 20s,” Wilmore said.
Moon hoax theory refers to the belief that the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s were faked. Wilmore had questioned the validity of the missions before he said he learned more about what it took to land people on the moon.
Wilmore followed the trail related to the level of G-force a human can handle, and found there was a lot of work that went into the science that provided U.S. and U.S.S.R. the ability for space flight.
“Then I started to ask some very important questions: Why would they go to such lengths to fake a moon landing? Why would they test the human capacity for G forces? Why would they build such a fake large model rocket? Why would they build many of them? Why would three people die during their very first plugs-out test?” he said, referring to the Apollo 1 mission.
Eventually, Wilmore’s parents introduced him to the popular space program Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, at age 25. From there, his interest took off.
Now 39, he has found a community online and in-person of space enthusiasts, including his wife, Cheyanne.
Cheyanne met Robert in 2018, at one of the Space Time events. He said they didn’t know what each other looked like for the first month or two of hanging out as it was always at night under the stars.
They had their first date three months after they began to hang out, and married in 2023. They currently live on the outskirts of Bellingham with their three cats Lyra, Bucky and Ted.
“I think that I am very fortunate to live in a society where this education is available and free to me, and the fact that I can absorb it and be able to share it freely without any oppression of any kind, I think, is just something to celebrate in itself.” – Robert Wilmore
Wilmore moved to Bellingham at age 16 from Los Angeles. He graduated from Sehome High School in 2005.
Outside of Space Time with Robert, Wilmore works as a washer for UPS delivery trucks, and spends time playing guitar and video games plus building rockets. He uses a rocket as a stand for one of his telescopes as well as a stand for informational cards and a Polaroid printer.
Attending one of the monthly events can offer the opportunity to participate in a few activities. For one thing, attendants can sign one of Wilmore’s telescopes. Of course, there is the opportunity to stargaze using one of several telescopes.
Wilmore calls the flagship Nexstar Celestron Evolution telescope “Vera” after Vera Rubin, the American astronomer. Vera replaced their Explore Scientific Newtonian telescope named Caroline after Caroline Herschel. In 2025, The group donated Caroline to Whatcom Community College.
Another telescope is a Seestar S50 that offers robotic telescoping capabilities. Wilmore uses this one for astrophotography and education. The third one Wilmore will bring is a Hydrogen Alpha telescope from Lunt Solar Systems. It’s the smallest one, and provides the ability to look at the Sun during the day by filtering out all light except a deep red.
Space time with Robert events are all free as he wants to keep it about fun.
“I’ve tried to sort of work with organizations and try and get more official, but it always just boils back down to fun because people will usually want to get money out of this, monetize it in some way,” he said. “It’s really just about sharing those views and those connections with people, right there in the moment, on the spot.
“It’s ‘space time.’ We’re sharing our ‘space’ and our ‘time’ with people,” Wilmore said.
To learn more about Space Time with Robert, visit their Reddit user page and Facebook.
We are Whatcom is a weekly column featuring Whatcom County residents making a positive impact on the community. To submit a Whatcom County resident to be featured, click here.