Physics department acquires long-awaited instrument
In May, the Department of Physics acquired a 14–inch Celestron reflecting telescope—an instrument that has been on the department’s wish list for the past five years.
It seemed natural when, shortly after its arrival, physics professors Ted Bunn and Con Beausang, along with math professor Bill Ross and physics department laboratory director Henry Nebel, took the unassembled telescope out to the University Forum and set it up for an impromptu viewing of Saturn.
“We have a lot of plans for this telescope,” Nebel said. “We’re looking to buy a charge-coupled device camera to use for astrophotography, capturing the images we see on the telescope. Eventually we’ll hook the telescope up to a computer so that it can be operated remotely.”
The Celestron’s capabilities will wow students. An observer can type in the name of any celestial body, and the telescope will find it automatically.
The physics department plans to schedule regular public viewing nights with the telescope, where students and people from the community can come to campus in the evening hours and observe the moon, various constellations, and whichever planets are visible on any given night. Students will be able to use the telescope for research projects, and some faculty members are already making plans to incorporate observation nights into their astronomy course syllabi.
“The University of Richmond has great resources for the sciences,” said Nebel. “But since there is no observatory, we are looking forward to seeing the telescope in its permanent home—installed on a platform, with a dome over top, on the roof of Gottwald.”
Nebel says the telescope will be up and running by the start of the fall semester.