PCC Astronomy Students Assemble Telescopes

WINTERVILLE�Four hundred years after Galileo first used telescopes to study the night sky, a group of observational astronomy students at Pitt Community College used a collection of seemingly ordinary construction items to assemble their own telescopes as part of a class project.

Like a scene from the television show, �McGyver,� members of instructor Charles Goodman�s AST 251 course met in Pitt�s Robert Lee Humber Building last month and built telescopes out of plywood, Sonotube concrete forms, mirrors and optics.

Goodman, a physics instructor at PCC for the past three years, said he taught observational astronomy this summer in response to a request from Greenville�s John and Nancy Bray to support the 2009 International Year of Astronomy celebration.

According to Goodman, the Brays have long been advocates of science education in North Carolina and recently received the state�s Champions of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Award. John Bray is one of the founders of Metrics, a Greenville contract laboratory specializing in pharmaceutical development, while Nancy is a former science teacher.

AST 251, according to the N.C. Community College System�s course library, covers the operation of telescopes and related observatory equipment. Students who successfully complete the class can set up telescopes and use them to locate objects, collect data and make measurements.

Goodman said he taught AST 251 this summer as a hybrid, meaning most of the information was provided online with only one required meeting on campus, which took place June 20. He said local students in the class had the option of attending additional meetings throughout the semester.

�In all, it has been a very fun and satisfying course,� Goodman said.

After teaching his students the history and functions of telescopes, Goodman asked class members to assemble their own. One student, Erik Kmetz, drove down from Washington, D.C., to participate in the assembly.

Goodman said most of the parts used in building the telescopes were available locally, from places like Lowe�s and Adams Products Company. The mirrors and optics, he said, were purchased directly from their manufacturer in bulk.

�The total cost to the students, including tuition, was far below that of having purchased a manufactured (telescope) of equal quality,� Goodman said. �Since the students built them, they can also fix them in the future if they ever need service.�

After assembling the telescopes, class members tried them out at the Bray Hollow Science/Nature Center located just outside of Greenville. Goodman said the students observed Saturn and several star clusters.

With AST 251 set to conclude this month, Goodman said he would be asking students to use their telescopes to spot a variety of objects in the night sky for a class assignment.

One student in Goodman�s class is already ahead of the game. Joseph Choate, who said his telescope �works beyond what I expected,� said he recently viewed Jupiter and three of its moons in addition to the craters and lunar mares of the Earth�s moon.

Choate, who is pursuing physics as a major, says AST 251 has added relevance to the information he learned in Descriptive Astronomy (or AST 111) during a previous semester at PCC.

07/08/2009