Press release from UNC Asheville:
Lookout Observatory on UNC Asheville’s campus has been operational for just over a year, opening its doors and sliding roof to students interested in astronomy and Asheville community members who want a closer look at the sun and stars.
Since opening in October 2014 through the end of the academic year in June 2015, the observatory welcomed more than 1,500 visitors from schools, civic groups, and the general public. It also was integrated into the astronomy minor curriculum at UNC Asheville, resulting in a number of successful student projects. Students imaged galaxies representing different Hubble classifications, turned their results from imaging the Andromeda Galaxy into a mosaic, and imaged the moon at different phases to calculate the height of impact craters and other lunar features.
Lookout Observatory has played a central role in UNC Asheville’s participation as a member institution in the North Carolina Space Grant Consortium (NCSGC), a group of institutions that have gathered together to promote scientific infrastructure and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education in the overarching context of space science. Base funding from NASA, received through NCSGC, is used to support all phases of student participation in the observatory. In 2015, for example, UNC Asheville student Dylan Cromer received a summer Research Scholarship for an astronomical project. In November 2014, six students presented results based on NCSGC supported research at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium in Raleigh.
Lookout Observatory is an active partnership between UNC Asheville and the Astronomy Club of Asheville (ACA). Operations are overseen by a steering committee composed of ACA President Dominic Lesnar; former ACA President Bernie Arghiere; UNC Asheville Physics Faculty Brian Dennison, Judy Beck and Chuck Bennett; and Lookout Observatory Manager and Physics Department Assistant Brian Hart. During the course of the 2014-15 academic year, UNC Asheville students Corey Aiken, Tom Benton, Alyssa Coburn, Dylan Cromer, Wren Gregory, Natalie Kamitsuka and Ashlyn Rickard served as Lookout Observatory docents.
Learn more about upcoming public events at https://lookoutobservatory.unca.edu/.
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