Observatory Gallery
After taking the Astronomy 100 course in my freshman year at Oberlin, I started working at the Observatory and Taylor Planetarium that sits atop Peters Hall. I've spent the last 3 years employed as an Observatory Assistant, working alongside Dave Lengyel to teach new Astronomy students and Oberlin community members how to navigate the night sky. Working at the observatory has been one of the highlights of my time at Oberlin. For the majority of my college experience, I've had the privilege of working with high quality astronomical equipment and high quality people. The Observatory and Taylor Planetarium is home to an advanced planetarium projection system and five resident telescopes. We have a 4” Celestron Refractor, a 6” Celestron Refractor, an 8” Newtonian Reflector, a 10” Dobsonian Reflector, and a 14” Dobsonian Reflector that resides in our rooftop observatory dome.
My role as an Observatory Assistant
In my role as an Observatory Assistant, I am responsible for setting up, aiming, monitoring, and dismantling these telescopes. Every other Friday (in ideal conditions) we flip on the red lights and open up the observatory, taking about 30 minutes to set up the equipment before we hold 1½ to 3 hour viewing sessions, depending on weather and visibility. These viewing sessions are designed to teach celestial navigation and an applicational approach of the material students in Astronomy 100 are learning throughout the course. Students in the course are required to visit the observatory and planetarium at least 4 and 6 times, respectively, throughout the semester in order to receive an A in the course. As an observatory assistant, it is my responsibility to keep our telescopes aimed and focused on the planets, star clusters, comets, and galaxies that our students are learning about, explain the what, where, and how details of what they are viewing. In this role, I also taught core concepts in observational astronomy, helping students understand the motions of the night sky, the systems and ancient stories of constellations, and basic telescope use in an engaging, accessible way. I also assisted in planetarium operations for make-up sessions of the students’ 6 required planetarium visits. In these sessions, students sit under a dome shaped ceiling about 4 meters in diameter where we project the 1,000 brightest stars visible from Earth and the planets of our Solar System, to learn more about
One event I’m extremely grateful to have experienced in my time on the observatory crew was the Great American Eclipse of 2024. We spent months preparing for that fateful day in April, and when the time came, we hauled our telescopes and specially constructed instruments down to the Dick Bailey football field at the other end of campus. We helped facilitate the field viewing, passed out eclipse glasses, set up several different methods of viewing the different phases of the solar eclipse safely while waiting for it to reach totality, and spent that time teaching the Oberlin students and community members that had made their way to the field for the viewing about the science behind solar eclipses. I will remember the cheer that came over that crowd of hundreds when the eclipse reached totality for the rest of my life.
One of my favorite parts of working at the observatory by far, has always been our open houses. The nights we opened our doors to the entire town and anyone else who found themselves in Oberlin late on a Friday night, curious about the stars. On these nights we got visitors from all over town and often the towns around us, sometimes even reaching the observing deck’s weight capacity, leading the observatory crew to enforce a temporary 1 in 1 out policy, keeping visitors busy in the planetarium while they waited for their turn to look through the telescopes on the deck upstairs. Through these open houses, I have gotten to show folks from all over, toddlers to great-grand parents from Arizona to New Zealand, their first up-close and personal view of another planet through our telescopes. I cherish every “Wow!” Every “Mom, come look!” Every single “thank you” I have received from visitors who came with questions for me to answer, and things they wanted to see that I have had the privilege of being able to show them.
Our
Story
In my role as an Observatory Assistant, I am responsible for setting up, aiming, monitoring, and dismantling these telescopes. Every other Friday (in ideal conditions) we flip on the red lights and open up the observatory, taking about 30 minutes to set up the equipment before we hold 1½ to 3 hour viewing sessions, depending on weather and visibility. These viewing sessions are designed to teach celestial navigation and an applicational approach of the material students in Astronomy 100 are learning throughout the course. Students in the course are required to visit the observatory and planetarium at least 4 and 6 times, respectively, throughout the semester in order to receive an A in the course. As an observatory assistant, it is my responsibility to keep our telescopes aimed and focused on the planets, star clusters, comets, and galaxies that our students are learning about, explain the what, where, and how details of what they are viewing. In this role, I also taught core concepts in observational astronomy, helping students understand the motions of the night sky, the systems and ancient stories of constellations, and basic telescope use in an engaging, accessible way. I also assisted in planetarium operations for make-up sessions of the students’ 6 required planetarium visits. In these sessions, students sit under a dome shaped ceiling about 4 meters in diameter where we project the 1,000 brightest stars visible from Earth and the planets of our Solar System, to learn more about
One event I’m extremely grateful to have experienced in my time on the observatory crew was the Great American Eclipse of 2024. We spent months preparing for that fateful day in April, and when the time came, we hauled our telescopes and specially constructed instruments down to the Dick Bailey football field at the other end of campus. We helped facilitate the field viewing, passed out eclipse glasses, set up several different methods of viewing the different phases of the solar eclipse safely while waiting for it to reach totality, and spent that time teaching the Oberlin students and community members that had made their way to the field for the viewing about the science behind solar eclipses. I will remember the cheer that came over that crowd of hundreds when the eclipse reached totality for the rest of my life.
One of my favorite parts of working at the observatory by far, has always been our open houses. The nights we opened our doors to the entire town and anyone else who found themselves in Oberlin late on a Friday night, curious about the stars. On these nights we got visitors from all over town and often the towns around us, sometimes even reaching the observing deck’s weight capacity, leading the observatory crew to enforce a temporary 1 in 1 out policy, keeping visitors busy in the planetarium while they waited for their turn to look through the telescopes on the deck upstairs. Through these open houses, I have gotten to show folks from all over, toddlers to great-grand parents from Arizona to New Zealand, their first up-close and personal view of another planet through our telescopes. I cherish every “Wow!” Every “Mom, come look!” Every single “thank you” I have received from visitors who came with questions for me to answer, and things they wanted to see that I have had the privilege of being able to show them.