Astronomy club looks up and out
A club devoted to 'bridging the gap between the liberal arts and sciences' sparks student interest, improves star-gazing technology as it applies for an official charter
Joy Pavelski
Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: News
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"As a club, it's meant to be educational and recreational at the same time," said Astronomy Club President Heidi Phillips, a junior and chemistry major.
As its inaugural event, the club sponsored Star Lab on Feb. 25, lectures about astronomy by Professor of Physics Kenneth Hayes accompanied by a star slide show beneath an inflatable dome planetarium owned by the college. Phillips indicated an information sign-up sheet with 31 names and e-mails the lectures generated for the club.
"A lot more people showed up Monday than I thought," Phillips said.
The club must still be approved by Student Federation before it lands on the official list of college clubs and organizations. To that end, Phillips and Physics Lab Director Judith Schellhammer are writing a club charter. This will be the first time the club has sought recognition from the federation - when Schellhammer first founded it in 2004, the club operated unofficially.
"The original purpose was to reach out to the whole campus and bring more non-science majors into Strosacker [Science Center] as a way of bridging the gap between the liberal arts and sciences," Schellhammer said Monday. "I think astronomy does that very well."
Phillips said she and other club leaders plan trips to planetariums and outdoor star gazing, among other activities. On March 28, the club will visit Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Club members may also begin giving talks with slide shows at local schools, something Schellhammer has done since 2005 as a solar system ambassador for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Schellhammer's latest demonstration with the Star Lab on Feb. 19 taught two classes of kindergarten students from Mauck School in Phillips Auditorium.
Astronomy has long associated with the Hillsdale physics department. Hayes, the club's faculty advisor, routinely teaches students to operate the five physics department telescopes.
"We have high quality telescopes," he said, "and we're happy to let students use them."
The telescopes now nestle among brightly colored mechanical clutter in the Quantum Optics Lab until they can be moved into Strosacker's basement. The lens of the largest stretches 20 inches in diameter.
"I'm afraid to clean it," Hayes
said - but the three telescopes most students commonly use are 8 inches in diameter. These smaller telescopes Hayes sometimes fits with cameras which track the night sky. He shot the sky with one during the lunar eclipse on Feb. 20.
Hayes first trains students to work the telescopes in Strosacker's hallways, then lets them out to explore night skies. In about a month, the physics department will own "My Sky," an instrument shaped somewhat like a gun which tells you what you are seeing in the sky wherever you point.
In the Middle Ages, astronomy was one of the pillars of a liberal arts education, Hayes said. The ancient concept of an ordered universe comes largely from the predictable movements of stars and planets.
"The knowledge of how big the universe is," Hayes said, "is important to understand your own place in the universe."
Phillips said she doesn't know very much about stars but is eager to learn, and hopes the club will spark a collaborative effect of like-minded peers.
"It's one of those things," she said. "People are in awe of the stars. It brings you into cosmology issues: What is the world? How did the universe begin? And people want to see beauty."
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