Students enjoy the wonders of space from right here on campus
If there was one takeaway from the stargazing party this past Wednesday night, it’s that we humans are not as big of a deal as we think we are.
“One of the things I think is really cool about this is that we tend to think of the universe as being sort of distant from our everyday lives,” explains Physics professor Dr. Todd Duncan, who has been putting on these events for years, “and I like being able to do it right here, you know, in the midst of campus, with the lights all around, to remind us we’re in the universe, it’s not just out there or something that we search for on the internet.”
The sights on a recent night, viewed from campus, were nothing short of breathtaking, bringing views you would normally see in museums and as computer screensavers right before the eyes of stunned students and community members.
These stargazing events began at Pacific about eleven years ago when Duncan first arrived on campus. Hosted in either the Barbara Gardens and Boxer Gardens, the frequency depends on the weather. “I usually do a couple in the fall just because it’s a good chance of getting clear skies, and then sometimes I do one in May when it’s clear again,” explains Duncan.
At this most recent event, around two dozen people gathered to see the radiant beauty of phenomena like the Whirlpool Galaxy, the Dumbbell Nebula, and the Crescent Nebula. Students were able to look directly through the telescope, a Unistellar eVscope 2, and connect to it via their phones to see the photos it was consistently taking and layering on top of each other. As the telescope layered more and more pictures, the image became clearer and more detailed.
No science background was necessary to comprehend the awesomeness of the night sky. Even so, senior physics major and frequent stargazer Julia Davis says while anyone can enjoy it, it also provides a fun connection to her studies. “I feel like it’s something that everyone can find fascinating at least a little bit, even if it isn’t, like, their expertise, but then when you know the physics behind it it just makes it so much better to look up and actually realize, like, ‘Okay, these laws that I’ve been learning, they created this.’”
Stargazing can be an easygoing campus activity, or it also can provide a rare glimpse at the cosmos that, while daunting in scale, also brings a new perspective to our own lives. “At the end of the day,” Davis says, “there is so much out there and so much wonder and so much life and yeah, stuff is hard right now but then, when you get the opportunity to actually come out and look at the stars and look at the sky… it really makes everything else just seem a little bit easier.”
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