Unveiling the Cosmos: Jackson College’s State-of-the-Art Astronomical Observatory
August 10, 2023
The stars. The planets. The great beyond. Jackson College is ready for eyes to look towards the skies with its state-of-the-art Astronomical Observatory.
At the heart of the observatory is the CDK700, a complete observatory class telescope designed and engineered by Adrian, Michigan’s PlaneWave Instruments.
The design produces a wider, flatter field and astigmatic-free field of view. The telescope optics are aligned for optimum performance all the way out to the edge of a 70-millimeter image circle. This means the stars will be pinpoints from the center of the field of view out to the corner field of view.
Exploring the Universe
“We are all astronomers whether we choose to pursue it as a field or not because you can’t help but notice things like that giant ball of plasma up there or at night, a little twinkling of the stars or you might see a satellite. All of that information is coming to us from through light through waves from the sky,” Raven Endowed Chair for Mathematics and Engineering Steve Tuckey said.
A big benefit of our observatory is the ability for remote and automated observing.
A weather station is positioned next to the observatory. This will allow Jackson College to protect the telescope from inclement weather.
“If you’re really fortunate like we are, you can have a telescope that’s connected to the Internet and a system of computers with data storage,” Tuckey said. “We can actually have the telescope kind of pre-programmed to point at a certain time. It can figure out where it has to point to be able to observe a certain star or nebula and to be able to open the shutters, point the telescope, gather the data and close the telescope.”
This allows Jackson College to have the telescope observe and take photos overnight.
“Then you can wake up in the morning and be able to see cool astrophotography that was taken place overnight. It’s going to be fabulous,” Tuckey said.
Plans also call for the capability to have additional telescopes that can be attached to mounts on a nearby pad where people can have ‘star parties,’ night sky observations and a solar telescope to have some daytime observations.
“The scale of the cosmos, the scale of the universe, to be able to sit at night and take a look at a star and know that the light that left that star started its journey to me, way before I was born, that is amazing. What I’m seeing is not just a place, but I’m also seeing time,” Tuckey said.
What separates Jackson College’s Astronomical Observatory from other nearby institutions is the newness of it. Telescopes at major research universities in the area are decades old and get updated along the way, but are older style.
“This telescope is fabulous. It has a terrific, huge aperture that is going to allow us to gather a lot of light,” Tuckey said. “You can think of a telescope as a big bucket that you point at the sky and it gathers light that comes in. The bigger the bucket you have, the more light you can gather. It’s also what you do with that light and how you process that light. We’re going to be able to do a lot of really cool astrophotography.”
Jackson College’s Space Connection
Jackson College has a proud history of being connected to the stars with two alumni who would go on to explore space – James McDivitt and Robert Freitag.
McDivitt would go on to be an American test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, aeronautical engineer and a NASA astronaut in the Gemini 4 mission and Apollo project.
Freitag worked on the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo-Soyuz and Spacelab programs and served NASA until 1986.
“Astronomy is open to literally anyone. You go outside. There’s the sky. Everything that we know about what’s going through the sky. Everything that we know about what’s going on outside of our planet comes at us through the sky,” Tuckey said.
Bringing the Observatory to Life
President Daniel Phelan says he is excited to see the addition of the astronomical observatory. He says it will add on to the portfolio of hands-on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) education opportunities. It was made possible through the collaboration of many people.
The images taken will be made available to the general public, according to Phelan.
Funds of $377,000 were awarded to Jackson College through the Congressionally Funded Community Projects grant to bring the observatory to the next level.
“I thank Senator Gary Peters for his support of the federal funding which helped make this facility possible,” Phelan said. “We also intend to partner with other groups in our community to make full use of the telescope.”
According to Chief Advancement Officer Julie Hand, securing these funds allowed the College to purchase and install deep space and planetary cameras, a spectrograph system, academic telescopes, weather station and cloud sensors, an all-sky camera, an observatory management system and image storage.
California-based Sea West Enterprises – a global leader in the field – was responsible for the dome and as Jackson College’s Astronomical Systems Consultant.
Two dozen companies – mostly local — were involved in the scope of the project including R.W. Mercer Co. in construction.
“Astronomy is like the gateway science that allows wonder and awe in everybody’s lives,” Tuckey said.
The astronomical observatory is in the southeast part of Central Campus next to the education innovation center and soccer field.