Astronomy at Governor's Academy: Senior Spring Term Project
Alright, this blog is also being posted after the fact. In addition to detailing some personal projects I have undertaken, I will share a few projects I have worked on in school that may help provide some more insight into what I do with visual astronomy.
As part of my course of study at The Governor’s Academy, I spent my final spring semester undertaking a project in visual astronomy. This all began when, during a lockdown drill, a good friend and I stumbled across a few telescopes the school’s physics department owned, tucked away in an old experiments and other no-longer-needed-trinkets closet. Upon further investigation, I learned that they were likely purchased for the school’s Physics department just after the turn of the century, inspired by a now-retired professor who loved astronomy. However, when that professor retired shortly after, he took any practical knowledge of how to use the telescopes with him, and they were left in the closet unused.
Earlier this year, my Astrophysics professor described Astronomy as the gateway drug to Physics. I think this description really helps explain why I felt compelled to do this project. Having access to equipment for observing space, along with no shortage of scientific knowledge between the staff, it feels like an opportunity was being missed to introduce more people to Physics (or other physical sciences) in a fun, awe-inspiring manner. The goal of this project was to help provide a baseline of knowledge in practical visual astronomy so some of the professors could put the equipment to use, either as part of classroom activities, or extracurricular science fun. Additionally, I sought to find meaningful applications that can be pulled from relatively simple observations. With respect to questions about why visual astronomy can be insightful, there are no shortage of answers in the spectrums of “it’s neat,” or highly technical significance; my hope was to find palatable ways to connect the two.
With all this said, the finished website can be viewed here:
I’ll encourage you to read through the website in order to see the ways that connected visual astronomy to classroom science. You’ll learn about how the Great Debate of modern(-ish) astronomy can, nowadays, be settled from the comfort of your back yard, set things on fire using the sun, and learn a bit more about what goes in to setting up and making use of a telescope.
For the remainder of this blog post, I’ll share a bit more about the activities that I hosted alongside this research, and a few other photos that didn’t make the website.
Observational Astronomy Weekend Activity
While the hope behind doing all of this work was that professors would catch on to the appeal of astronomy to inspire and inform physical inquiry, I knew that getting students interested would help keep the idea alive after I graduated. When we finally got a clear, warm-ish Saturday in the spring, I brought one of the school’s telescopes out to a field on campus, and organized an official event to have students come out and look at the night sky.
Overall, I would consider the event mostly successful. While I had big ambitions for what objects we could observe, including some star clusters that lost a race against the setting sun, or that I couldn’t track effectively, we still observed enough for everyone who came out to be able to see into space. The moon was the easy target, and that alone provided something that many said was inspiring enough, although we ended up being able to observe a planet as well, along with one star cluster.
The Moon, captured through one of Governor’s Academy’s Newtonian telescopes by holding my phone to the eyepiece.
Towards the end of the semester, I also found an opportunity to bring visual astronomy into the classroom. After our AP Exam ended any coursework, my Physics professor (who oversaw this project) and I found a free day in the schedule for me to teach a short lesson on the sun, and solar cycles. After this lesson, I took the class outside, and we were able to observe the sun both with solar eclipse glasses as well as the small telescopes. Using the telescope, we were able to identify many of the sun-spots featured on NASA’s live sun images webpage with our own eyes. I do, sadly, believe that the slide deck I presented from is lost to my now de-activated school email.
