What's Happening in Lowell, MA…

The Lowell campus of the University of Massachusetts will be the site of a new observatory, set to open in the coming months.

The facility will feature a 14-inch telescope on a computerized mount. Through the instrument, astronomers will be able to see the lava plains and craters on the moon; Jupiter and its satellites; and galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae, even though they are light-years away. Brochure printing can be used to create pamphlets describing facilities like this.

A cylindrical building, seven feet high, with a metal dome on top will house the telescope. The dome is built by Ash-Dome, which supplies them to both private and professional observatories throughout the world. Motorized, the dome weighs approximately 3,200lb and is 16.5 feet in diameter.

The telescope can be operated manually by someone in the building, but can also be controlled remotely by faculty members and students anywhere on the campus, according to Silas Laycock, an associated professor with the Department of Physics and Applied Physics. The university is planning to attach a CCD camera to the telescope, so the images captured by the mechanism can be seen remotely, on computer screens throughout the campus.

Undergraduate students majoring in astronomy and physics will use the telescope to conduct lab exercises and make observations, while graduate students will use it for research in subjects such as imaging and astrometry, says Laycock. Once a month, the observatory will be open to the public.