EIU Media Relations

EIU Department Shoots For The Stars; Succeeds With Completed Observatory

When Eastern Illinois University students reach for the stars, they'll be able to get a good look at them, too.

A new campus observatory, complete with a state-of-the-art computer-driven 16-inch telescope, became operational this fall, giving both students and faculty at the university unprecedented access to the skies above Charleston.

The new observatory will be dedicated this Friday, Oct. 29, and the public is welcome to join students and staff at the site at 9 p.m. as they put the new equipment to the test - weather permitting.

"It will be a major advantage for both teaching and research," said James Conwell, a professor in Eastern's Physics Department who was the driving force behind construction of the new facility. "There's a lot of stuff you can do with a scope of this size."

The new observatory is tucked away in the southwestern corner of campus between O'Brien Stadium and the new intramural softball fields to the south. The 16-by-30-foot building houses a 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and has room for a planned additional large scope, a control room and storage areas for smaller, portable telescopes. A dome on top, which can open and rotate to provide views of all parts of the sky, gives the structure the familiar outline of an observatory.

The project has been years in the planning and construction, Conwell said.

"Three years ago we put in the concrete pad and two pedestals (raised piers on which telescopes are mounted). Two years ago we put up the Sturdibuilt building, and last year the students and I constructed the platform. This last May we cut through the roof and put on the dome, and this summer we built the control room. We just installed the telescope in September," he said.

The telescope housed in the observatory weighs 800 pounds fully assembled and is powerful enough to reveal otherwise invisible 15th magnitude stars to the unaided eye and 20th magnitude bodies when digitally coupled with a computer, Conwell said. The scope is fully robotically controlled, and while it can be used for eyepiece viewing, most of its targets will be studied on computer monitors.

"The major advantage, besides the fact that it's a big scope, is that it's permanently mounted," Conwell said. "You don't have to take time to set up it and align it. It really is a major step forward in terms of ease of use. We expect to be able to get 100 times more use out of it than what we can do now."

In the past, the physics department has had to rely on small, portable telescopes to teach students astronomy. Viewing often was done from the roof of the Physical Sciences Building, where light pollution and the elements often impaired observation. The new observatory will be utilized as a hands-on teaching tool, but because of its capabilities, it will have a research role, too.

"Astronomy is sort of the last bastion of science where amateurs can make a contribution," said Conwell, who has been a member of Eastern's Physics Department faculty since 1985 and has been on sabbatical this semester while he sees the observatory to completion.

"We'll be starting a supernova search and also take part in the study of pulsing stars. Since it's fully robotic, we will even be able to use it from back in the physics department offices. Because it's programmable, we'll be able to give it a list of objects to photograph and it will be able to take 500 to 1,000 galaxies a night."

Several department faculty members will use the observatory on a regular basis for teaching and research, and as many as 100 physics and astronomy students might utilize it, too. In fact, Eastern students played a critical role in construction of the observatory and will continue to be beneficiaries of the facility.

"All the construction inside was done by students," Conwell said, "and by hand, because we didn't have power on the site at the time." For their efforts, those volunteers got class credit in the form of independent studies; in the future, they and other students who are members of Eastern's Astronomy Club, which is open to the entire university community, will be able to use the scope hands on.

"We got a lot of manpower from the Astronomy Club," he said, "and they will continue to do a lot of the work."

Other construction work was provided by university electricians and carpenters, Conwell said. Advance planning and making use of all available resources also helped control costs. For example, excess concrete from the Booth Library renovation project was used for the foundation of the observatory building rather than being wasted. Physics faculty member Doug Brandt oversaw construction of the observation platform.

"Eventually, we hope to have viewing for the public on a Friday or Saturday night once a month," Conwell said.