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Westmont’s monthly stargazing event features a triangle asterism, a globular cluster and a waxing moon on Friday, August 16, beginning about 8 p.m. and lasting several hours at the Westmont Observatory. Along with the college’s powerful Keck Telescope, members of the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit bring their telescopes to share with the public.
The 12-day old moon, which moves through its waxing gibbous phase into a full moon, will be an easy target for stargazers. “Being able to see the boundary between light and shadow on the moon is one of my favorite things because you can see so much detail of the moon’s surface. It’s not just blinding you with its light,” says Jennifer Ito, assistant professor of physics.
The summer triangle asterism, Vega, Altair and Deneb, will also be on the celestial menu at the viewing. “Vega, the brightest and part of the constellation Lyra, is about 25 light-years away, which means the light coming to us is from around the turn of the century,” Ito says.
Viewers will also get a glimpse of Messier 13, the Hercules Globular Cluster, which was discovered in 1714 by Edmond Halley of Halley’s comet fame. “It’s a cluster with about half a million stars that are on average 25,000 light-years away from us,” says Ito, who helped launch Westmont’s new astrophysics minor and taught the first observational astronomy course last spring where students got to learn to work with the Keck telescope.
Ito says she is also grateful for the college’s partnership with Las Cumbres Observatory, whose technicians cleaned the Keck Telescope mirrors this summer.
Free parking is available near the Westmont Observatory, which is between the baseball field and the track and field/soccer complex. To enter Westmont’s campus, please use the Main Entrance off of La Paz Road. The lower entrance off of Cold Springs Road is closed to visitors after 7 p.m.
In case of overcast weather, please call the Telescope Viewing Hotline at (805) 565-6272 and check the observatory website to see if the viewing has been canceled.