Hello Skyline College Community,
After the generous donation of several high-end telescopes of math instructor Tadashi Tsuchida’s father Roy Tsuchida, we have revived the Astronomy Club. The lead was taken by STEM student, Rod Regado, who accepted the position as club president and gathered students who were interested in astronomy. An interesting fact about the members is that they do not exclusively have a STEM background. The members come from different fields but have the common interest of astronomy.
The most recent activity the Astronomy Club had was outside watching the sky last Tuesday. After the Lunar Eclipse on Sunday night, January 20, 2019, there is still a Supermoon. This means the Moon’s orbit brings it very close to Earth and allows excellent observation. At 7:00 p.m., the students took some of our new telescopes to the Skyline College Parking Lot R, next to the sports fields. This was a good position to observe the Moon as it was rising over the horizon. Everyone has seen the Moon many times, but it is exciting to take a closer look on its surface with its numerous craters and planes, also called mares, through a telescope. We had several different telescopes with us, which allowed us to see the difference in the make and image quality.
We are planning on doing various observation nights and if you are interested and want to learn more about the club or participate in some of the activities, we meet every Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in the Fab Lab, Building 7, Room 7-310.
Article and Photo by Marco Wehrfritz
