Bryant Students Visit Seagrave
by Dave Huestis
Since I’ve been teaching an astronomy lab at Bryant University (since January 2009) I try to schedule a star party at Seagrave for my students before the semester ends. This year the weather has been absolutely horrible. Every Saturday was cloudy, and a lot of the other scheduled star parties were also canceled. I was constantly emailing my students telling them of a cancellation.
With only two astronomy labs remaining I decided to have the students visit Seagrave regardless of what Mother Nature threw our way. At least they would be able to see what a marvelous facility Skyscrapers own and operate.
A few days prior to the evening of April 30 it looked like we were actually going to have clear skies. Then as usual, the forecast changed and the skies were completely overcast.
There was a Board of Directors meeting that Monday evening, so I had to excuse myself from the proceedings to provide my students a tour of the property, including an in-depth historical review of various items in our anteroom museum, our beautiful Clark refractor, and a quick look at all the telescopes out back in the roll-off roof observatories.
Bob Forgiel was also kind enough to provide the students a short demonstration on astrophotography. They were amazed at the results he had obtained with his personal equipment. You see, during the semester they were supposed to conduct a project to obtain images using Project Slooh. However, Slooh was down for days due to technical reasons, plus the weather in the Canary Islands was absolutely appalling. Only one team of my Monday lab actually got some results—an image of Mars.
Those students who will be returning in the fall said that they would like to come back when the skies are clear to take advantage of the views our telescopes can provide.
They will be most welcome.
In written reports about their experience at Seagrave, several students commented on the obvious pride members of Skyscrapers show in the preservation of the facilities. Nicki wrote, “I hope to one day be as passionate about my field of work ...” And Robert wrote, “I appreciate the visit because I have never been to an observatory and it was amazing to see what care has gone to the main telescope inside the dome. It was a very impressive mechanism.
When the semester started at the end of January, most of these students were very green …. and I don’t mean environmentally conscious. Most couldn’t tell me the name and order of the planets outward from the Sun.
I am proud to say that the lowest grade for the semester in my Monday night lab was a 90 (A-).
