Members of the Carleton community attended an edition of Astronomy Nights and observed the night sky on the evening of March 31.
The Kessler Observatory, located on the roof of the Herzberg Laboratories, is a dome with a telescope powerful enough to view Jupiter, its moons, and surrounding stars.
“You could see it so close even though it’s super far away,” Carleton student Jenny McLeod said. “It was a really good day to do it and it’s so clear you could see the stars before you get up there.”
The dome also features a weather station, which enables it to close up automatically in the event of rain or bad weather conditions, and a camera that allows photos of the view to be taken from inside Herzberg if it is too cold to observe outside.
Etienne Rollin, a lab supervisor for Carleton’s physics department, said the observatory is also beneficial for undergraduate research topics for physics students.
“I do [astronomy nights] for fun, but the department of physics backs me up,” Rollin said.
“I am very fortunate to be in charge of this. The dome itself has been around since 1985,” he said.
The observatory was named after long time faculty member Dan Kessler, who was a key figure of Carleton’s observatory’s establishment, according to Carleton’s website.
Public observations are organized monthly, depending on the weather.
Rollin said he is looking forward to observing other planets in the summer.
“Mars will be very nice to observe,” he said. “The bad thing in the summer is mosquitos and the sun sets very late so we can’t really observe before 11 p.m.”
