By Taylor James Staff Writer
East Central College partners with the Eastern Missouri Dark Sky Observers for a public stargazing event.
Eastern Missouri Dark Sky Observers (EMDSO) partnered with East Central College’s astronomy department and put on a stargazing event for the local community on Aug. 31 on the ECC-Union campus. Rick Schwentker, the leader of EMDSO, stated he wants to share EMDSO’s love for astronomy with the community. This event has been going on since 1996 and takes place once a month in the ECC, N parking lot at dusk. Schwentker is an ECC alumnus and has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Missouri State University of Science and Technology. His organization originally built an observatory on the other side of campus, but then settled down and found the perfect location to put on the event and look up at the stars.
ECC professor Jim Small is passionate about astronomy and teaches this subject at the campus. He loves talking to all the different people that come to the event to look at the stars but he enjoys it more when the sky is clear. That was his biggest issue at the latest stargazing event or what he and his students call,”star parties.” Small has an impressive background in astronomy; he studied at Truman State University and continued his study of astronomy at Swinburne in Melbourne, Australia, a university that holds prestige worldwide.. He enjoys the location especially for students because it’s close and they don’t have to go far to learn more about astronomy. Small is also the president of the St. Louis Astronomical Society, which hosts meetings every month for students and communities to engage within that field.
ECC students get involved with the star party too. Sophomore Molly Ferguson stated, “I thought coming to the star party would be really interesting… we know that we’re here to look at the stars and stargaze.” Ferguson became interested in taking an astronomy class and wanted to dive deeper into the study of it. She also stated that intro to astronomy students are required to attend at least one of the public stargazing events per semester. Ferguson mentioned her favorite part about astronomy is learning about the expansion of the universe and the movement of the stars and the planets and the constellations of the stars at different times of the year. She did also mention the origin of the name “star party” coming from a basic idea from Small about looking at the stars up at night.
Small hopes that the public comes to the events that are put on campus and people can ask questions to learn more about astronomy. He hopes showing a little bit about astronomy will cause more people to ask questions about the field. Smallbone also mentioned that the St. Louis Astronomical Society has lecturers come in every month to share more information about astronomy. He hopes more students would come join them for stargazing events that happen once a month. His overall mission is to help his students and the community learn more about the universe.
EMDSO has an observatory in New Haven, Mo. in coordination with Cedar Creek. The telescope is 30 inches and is blue in color and is the newest model for EMDSO. The new one was built off of salvaged parts from their original telescope. EMDSO uses the public stargazing event as a way to get people to advertise for people to come to their observatory at Cedar Creek in New Haven. Schwentker mentioned the previous observatory at ECC as not having the best location and that’s why they built one in New Haven. The Big Blue Observatory is open to the public and Schwentker hopes more people come down to see them.
Events that are open to the public at ECC are crucial not just for educating the students but also the public. Many public events take place at ECC and when they come they will be enriched with a better education of that given topic. The public stargazing is just one event that students can come and connect with the public and in which they can enrich themselves with more knowledge. The next EMDSO public stargazing will be Sept. 28 and will meet once again in the N parking lot at East Central College.
ECC Cornerstone 