Observatory Report

I visited the Orchard Hill observatory at UMass Amherst on the night of Halloween (October 31) from 7:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. I decided to attend this event, not only because there was an extra credit assignment involving this, but because I have wanted to be inside the observatory for some time now. I play disc golf with my friends often and the first hole of the course is right next to the observatory. Being interested in space and astronomy, I was immediately intrigued with the building. The extra-credit assignment was therefore a no-brainer. I went alone to the event, but the astronomy club was there, as well. It was absolutely worthwhile because I live in Central so that was the first time I was at the top of Orchard Hill at nighttime and I was absolutely taken aback by the amount of visibility that was in the sky; I could see stars anywhere I looked. As soon as I returned to my dorm, I recommended it to my roommate and I would happily recommend it to more of my friends. If the astronomy club was to organize another similar event, I would definitely attend. They really did a good job of making the event on Halloween interesting and engaging. The only thing that could have been better would probably be if they had clarified what exactly we were looking at through the telescope as I never knew the names of the stars at which I was looking. However, later in the evening, I used the SkyView application for the iPhone and walked the length of the first three holes of the disc golf and course. The SkyView application works when one holds his phone to the sky and the app identifies what the stars, constellations, and celestial bodies being seen are known as. Right in my direct line of sight was the constellation was Ursa Minor and it was beautiful to both see and know exactly what it was that I was looking at.

At this event, I learned that stars have different colors. I always believed that stars were simply bright collections of striking white light, but when I looked into the powerful telescope, I saw that the stars were blue and yellow, not just white. According to the president of the astronomy club, human beings with the use of the naked eye see the stars as bright, white light. But when looking through the telescope, colors can be differentiated which shows that the stars not only have variance in their physical appearances, but also that the telescope at the Orchard Hill observatory is incredibly strong.

Learning about the stars in my astronomy class was definitely helpful in understanding what I was looking for and, despite being able to see very small images of the stars, knowing what the activity of the stars was in all their massive distances from the Earth. For example, the same day I went to the observatory, I also read chapter ten of the online astronomy textbook and I learned that stars are spherical in shape. This is something I probably could have inferred from my knowledge of the Sun, but it never really occurred to me before. Reading that in the textbook helped me understand more about the stars, just as my trip to the observatory did. At one point in the evening, too, the observatory was rotated to face a different part of the sky and I knew (from class) that this was because of the celestial sphere’s rotation and the observatory and the telescope was forced to accommodate for the fact that desired objects in the sky would be located at different parts of it.

The below sketch I drew is what I saw when I looked into the telescope. This moment happened at 7:55 P.M. on October 31, 2016 and I was looking in the northeast direction. The stars I saw are relevant to this report because they are the ones with multiple colors (blue and yellow) that I had not known could be possible until visiting the observatory.

Image Source: Pinterest