At the Observatory

Tonight I went to the campus observatory with three friends, one of whom is minoring in Astronomy. I took an intro Astronomy class last spring semester, but never made it up to the observatory until tonight. They have open nights on Wednesdays from 9pm-11pm, and since it was a clear night and not too chilly, we decided to take a study break and go see some stars.

Just a little history for you: Astronomy is one of the oldest departments at Vassar. The first hired professor of Vassar College, Maria Mitchell, was already an accomplished astronomer when Vassar opened in 1861. She even has a comet named after her - in 1847 she discovered the "telescopic comet," a comet too distant to be seen with the naked eye. The old observatory, also called the Maria Mitchell observatory, was the first building completed on Vassar campus after Main Building, and was renovated to be equipped with classrooms after a new observatory was built. (Click on the link, the building is really pretty.) The first class I ever went to at Vassar was actually in that building! Needless to say, it was high time I made my way up to the new observatory to see some stars.

Unfortunately, tonight the 32-inch telescope was out of commission due to some technical issues, so we looked at stars through the 8-inch telescope. (That's the diameter of the lens...it's okay, I didn't know either.) The coolest thing we saw was Saturn and its rings. Yes, its rings! It was amazing. I googled an image of Saturn through a telescope, and this is pretty close to what we saw. You could actually see the band of light around the planet. It looked like one of those glow-in-the-dark planet shapes kids stick on their ceilings.


We also looked at a cluster of stars almost invisible to the naked eye, which was pretty cool too. We're planning to go back on another clear Wednesday night in hopes that we can look through the big 32-inch telescope. And we might even be able to look at the moon, depending on where it is in the sky.